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This is almost FP vs OOP religious war in disguise. Similar to vim-vs-emacs ... where op comes first in vim but selection comes first in emacs. If you design s
by sriku 1y ago
This is almost FP vs OOP religious war in disguise. Similar to vim-vs-emacs ... where op comes first in vim but selection comes first in emacs.
If you design something to "read like English", you'll likely get verb-first structure - as embodied in Lisp/Scheme. Other languages like German, Tamil use verbs at the end, which aligns well with OOP-like "noun first" syntax. (It is "water drink" word for word in Tamil but "drink water" in English.) So Forth reads better than Scheme if you tend to verbalize in Tamil. Perhaps why I feel comfy using vim than emacs.
Neither is particularly better or worse than the other and tools can be built appropriately. More so with language models these days.
- dragonwriter 1y ago> If you design something to "read like English", you'll likely get verb-first structure If its imperative, sure. If its declarative and designed to read like English it will be subject first.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- cesarb 1y ago> Other languages like German, Tamil use verbs at the end Doesn't German have the main verb on the second position? (For a simple example, "I drink water" would be "Ich trinke Wasser")
- andyferris 1y agoYeah I thought the German ambiguity was SVO vs OVS, “Fritz fished fish” vs “Fish, fished Fritz”..
- aredox 1y agoYeah, wrong one, but there are many languages out there where the verb is always at the end (Latin, Japanese I think).
- nyeah 1y agoInviting native German speakers to comment. Of course we anglophone-only HN geniuses can answer cesarb's question brilliantly on our own. But perhaps as a little sidebar we could also get your 'opinion'. Thanks! /s
- sriku 1y agoIn that form yes, but the active "drink water" which is kind of what we'd code like "drink(water)" is "wasser trinken". ... but yeah human languages aren't straightjacketed easily.
- aredox 1y ago>where op comes first in vim Doesn't Kakoune reverses that, and it makes so much more sense? https://kakoune.org/why-kakoune/why-kakoune.html https://kakoune.org/why-kakoune/why-kakoune.html
- jodrellblank 1y agoIs it telling that the name is vi improved (noun verb) rather than improved vi (verb noun)?