Re: Three Kinds of Logical Trees

Gene Wirchenko wrote:
> On 25 Jul 2005 22:06:50 -0700, "Marshall Spight"
> <marshall.spight_at_gmail.com> wrote:
>
> >dawn wrote:
> >> Marshall Spight wrote:
>
> [snip]
>
> >On a related note, I really don't think that if you sat down and,
> >without thinking about representation, wrote down all the operators
> ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
> I think that this is the important part.

definitely important for the conceptual and logical data models

> >[Let me just state for the record that my singular indefinite "he"
> >is not gender specific. Rather it is a consequence of the lack of
> >a gender inspecific pronoun in the English language, coupled with
> >a wish to avoid the difficulties of speaking of indefinite people
> >in the plural. Void where prohibited. Driver carries no change.]
>
> There are two. One is "he" which has a gender-neutral meaning
> when gender is unknown.

but does not (typically) render a gender-neutral picture in people's minds (at least not in my mind). Men might view themselves as a possible "he" while women will tend to picture someone apart from themselves filling that role.

I have no idea to what extent such sloppiness in the language from the start has lead to incorrect perceptions, but I'm quite sure the set thereof is not null.

> The other is "it".

I'd prefer to be called an "it" than a "he". In the 80's most of my IT mailings were addressed to Donald Wolthuis. So, some people even ensure that the proper nouns sound male. Enough already!

> [snip]
>
> >> > As for cool examples, check out quicksort in Haskell:
> >> > http://www.haskell.org/aboutHaskell.html
> >> >
> >> > Blew my mind the first time I saw it.
> >> Will do.
> >
> >I can't recommend looking at lots of different languages enough.
> >If all you've ever encountered is the Algol-family, like I had
> >when I started this whole thing, you've encountered only a very
> >narrow slice of what's possible.
>
> That was interesting code. I am interested in how a language
> works in general, since it is not enough just to code the part that
> language is good for.
>
> [snip]
>
> >> Yup, let's just hope no one else is attempting to follow this one.
>
> Bzzzt!

Rats -- you found us. And, as with any of my postings, if I wrote anything that wasn't exactly brilliant, please disregard and don't count it against me. Are you left with a null? smiles. --dawn Received on Tue Jul 26 2005 - 21:56:26 CEST