Every Language Fixes Something

It was a nice idea, but this page ended up being full of quibbles over minor points, claim and counter-claim about intent, and finally I got convinced that it was a complete waste of time when someone wrote that it was impossible to get it right because we could never read a language designer's neurons.

DeletedUnlessDefended. I defend. Next paragraph is valuable.

I find this concept important, even if the arguing over the details is meaningless. It reminds me of the first CS class I ever took, where the teacher said that the purpose of computers is not to communicate or store data or do math, but to solve problems. The programming language is the tool we use to express a solution to some problem. Every language is built with a certain type of problem-solving in mind. It is important to remember that.

Then I return you to your argument(s) - I wipe my hands of the issue.

Here is the original:

Here is the modified version as far as it got before I pulled the plug: