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Language changes dramatically over time. Read English from 1000 years ago! There is a great example in "The Language Instinct" which shows a writing in English
by jshen 12y ago
Language changes dramatically over time. Read English from 1000 years ago! There is a great example in "The Language Instinct" which shows a writing in English from 4 different periods in time. The oldest will make non sense to modern English speakers.
- steveklabnik 12y agoThat's why I said 'fairly' stable. Compared to the length of time it takes software to change, languages are effectively immutable ;)
- jshen 12y agoyou have a strange definition of immutable. Language is changing rather constantly. Take an 80 year old and have them listen to a conversation between 16 year olds. I bet there are a bunch of words they don't know the meaning of.
- steveklabnik 12y agoIn this analogy, you're talking about PPC specific assembly code, and I'm talking about C. I mean, yes, this is fuzzy. It's hard to even nail down what "English" _is_, for things like what you're saying. The broader point is that computer languages have a much smaller period of time where their particular language is spoken than human languages. We'll see if that changes in the future, but I doubt it.