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English is not popular because it is "easy to copy" or any nonsense like that. As already mentioned, people who didn't speak English were killed. Likewise in th

by yati 13y ago

English is not popular because it is "easy to copy" or any nonsense like that. As already mentioned, people who didn't speak English were killed. Likewise in the PHP boom, people who did not write PHP were underpaid(not all, but you get my point) - and BTW, the Web is not all a programmer has to/can hack on. Not sure why you put DNA in there, but I think the DNA is pretty expressive, powerful(packs a lot in a lot less) and Darwin has helped us understand evolution as a pretty systematic process. At least do some basic homework before making bold claims.

gngeal 13y ago
English is not popular because it is "easy to copy" or any nonsense like that. English may not be easy to copy but it's comparatively "bland". "Bland" in this case means "has a smaller number of marked features". For example, it has no tones. It's always easier for someone speaking a tonal language to learn a toneless language than the other way round. Sanskrit has a complex system of synthetic inflection, which is a rather marked feature, and all speakers of analytic languages would hate your guts for forcing it onto them if you tried to make them learn it. In many ways, Sanskrit is like Ancient Greek. You spend a year learning something that other languages can do without (and do so without muddling the meaning of the text), and even if you learn it, you'll still be doing mistakes quite a lot of the time. Such a language would never have a chance of spreading as an international medium of communication.
scotty79 13y ago
Non PHP web devlopers underpaid? PHP devlopers are the bottom feeders. I know. I'm one. They are paid lowest because there's a lot of them. There are a lot of them because they are most abundant. They are most abundant not because PHP is well desinged language but because ability to use PHP is easy to copy. As for DNA read about non-coding sequences, telomers, pleiotropy and such. I'll state again. DNA is the pretty dumb chaotic stuff, built out of the most common intersting chemical element, carbon. It's everywhere not because it's well designed but because it copies well. It has 4bln years of incremental chaotic patches and cruft all around. I don't think any system that suffered through such history would be admired by any software architect.

by yati 13y ago

gngeal 13y ago

English is not popular because it is "easy to copy" or any nonsense like that. English may not be easy to copy but it's comparatively "bland". "Bland" in this case means "has a smaller number of marked features". For example, it has no tones. It's always easier for someone speaking a tonal language to learn a toneless language than the other way round. Sanskrit has a complex system of synthetic inflection, which is a rather marked feature, and all speakers of analytic languages would hate your guts for forcing it onto them if you tried to make them learn it. In many ways, Sanskrit is like Ancient Greek. You spend a year learning something that other languages can do without (and do so without muddling the meaning of the text), and even if you learn it, you'll still be doing mistakes quite a lot of the time. Such a language would never have a chance of spreading as an international medium of communication.

scotty79 13y ago

Non PHP web devlopers underpaid? PHP devlopers are the bottom feeders. I know. I'm one. They are paid lowest because there's a lot of them. There are a lot of them because they are most abundant. They are most abundant not because PHP is well desinged language but because ability to use PHP is easy to copy. As for DNA read about non-coding sequences, telomers, pleiotropy and such. I'll state again. DNA is the pretty dumb chaotic stuff, built out of the most common intersting chemical element, carbon. It's everywhere not because it's well designed but because it copies well. It has 4bln years of incremental chaotic patches and cruft all around. I don't think any system that suffered through such history would be admired by any software architect.