[erlang-questions] Surprising conclusion in Parallel programming environments: less is more

[G Bulmer]

> Date: Thu, 4 Oct 2007 10:43:12 +0200
> From: "David Welton" <davidnwelton@REDACTED>
> ...
> The Paradox of Choice book is pretty good, and while the above
> conclusions are off, the concept is valuable.
>
> Think of how anxious some people get trying to pick the "best"
> programming language, especially because as someone with less
> experience, they have less skills to even judge.

> Date: Thu, 4 Oct 2007 12:41:09 -0500
> From: "David Mercer"
>
> Ok:
>
>> Oh, and with about 6,000 natural languages
>> on Earth, we should most of us be so paralysed by choice that we  
>> don't
>> say anything!
>>
>
> Good point.  I need to go check out some of those other languages  
> to see if
> they would actually be better than English.  Anyone got any  
> suggestions?
>
> I've heard Chinese is really good, because one character can convey an
> entire word, rather than having to string multiple characters  
> together.
>
> On the other hand, the smaller alphabet of English is kind of like  
> a macro
> capability, since you can form new words out of the basic building  
> blocks.
> Maybe a language with a smaller alphabet is better though.  Greek  
> has only
> 24 letters...
>

'Surely' natural language recognition has developed to the point  
where it can process Esperanto:
http://www.esperanto.net/
so why do we even need the artificial division between natural  
languages and programming languages !-)
Then there *is* a single default for everything; no matter what you  
want to say, you can be similarly well understood everywhere ;-)

GB

PS - Thanks to all of the wonderful folks at the Erlang and CUFP  
workshops. It was a great experience. Night, night, and safe journeys  
home.