Re: Syntax trees, macros, and reflexive Lua evolution

[David Given <dg@...>]

On Tuesday 09 November 2004 15:40, Asko Kauppi wrote:
> Could you please explain to us to-be-doctors, what you mean by:
>
> 9.11.2004 kello 16:43, Dr. Rich Artym kirjoitti:
> >  Wholesale attachment to a 1-dimensional textual representation is
> > rather
> > bizzare, when you think about it, and my guess is that it will
> > disappear
> > entirely once programming attains some sort of maturity.

What he's saying is that since code is, fundamentally, structured as a 
branching decision tree, the fact that an overwhelming number of decisions as 
to the design of that code are made on the basis of how well the code can be 
expressed on paper is a bit strange.

Personally, I think that this is unlikely to change until AI is sufficiently 
complicated that it's possible to write meaningful programs use a DWIM 
paradigm. The simple reason is that humans are very used to dealing with 
words. We have hardware designed specifically to do that. Flattening the 
complex decision trees that are thoughts into linear streams of words so that 
they can be transmitted to another person is so fundamental to the way we 
think that it's impossible to consider how we might think any other way.

Rather than train ourselves to think in a different way just to make it easier 
to communicate with computers, I'd much rather train the computers to have 
better verbal skills so that they can communicate with *us*.

But this is hardly relevant to Lua!

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