Emerging Languages Conference next week!

[Nick Sabalausky]

"Jonathan M Davis" <jmdavisprog at gmail.com> wrote in message 
news:mailman.0.1279934183.13841.digitalmars-d-announce at puremagic.com...
> On Friday 23 July 2010 11:46:47 Nick Sabalausky wrote:
>> It's always bugged me when people use the term "invent" in relaton to a
>> programming language. It's like saying that a musician "invented" a song,
>> or that Mark Twain "invented" a book. Wrong word.
>
> Actully, I believe that invent _is_ the right word here. You write a book 
> or a
> song. With a book or a song, you're actually physically writing something 
> (well,
> in the past anyway - now it may be typing or involve a mouse, but people 
> used
> pen and paper before). With a computer program, you are again writing it 
> (again
> likely typing it, but for pretty much the same reasons, the word write 
> applies).
> However, a programming _language_ is a tool, not something that you write 
> with
> pen and paper. Tools aren't written. They're invented. So, a programming
> language is invented, not written. The compiler itself - being a program - 
> is
> written, but the language itself is invented.
>

I'll grant that "'write' a language" isn't quite correct (unless you're 
talking about writing the spec, or writing the grammar, etc.), although I 
was going more for "create" (or "develop", or "design", etc.). "Invent" 
tends to imply the creation of a new technology or concept. But a new 
programming language is more an arrangement and implementation of such 
"inventions" (variables, static typing, LL/LR parsing, etc., although, of 
course, one could argue that even these are more "discoveries" than 
"inventions", but that gets into the "Is math/logic a creation or a 
discovery?" debate, on which I hold no particular opinion.) True, most 
inventions do include other inventions as their components, but I'd argue 
that merely using existing inventions doesn't necessarily constitute an 
invention.

As far as "Tools aren't written. They're invented.", I agree, but only to a 
point: The hammer is an invention. But if you go and create your own line 
and brand of hammers, you didn't "invent" Brand X Hammers. "Programming 
language" itself was an invention. But it's already been invented, and now 
we're just making specific instances of the technology that is "programming 
language". A new programming language may intruduce a new invention (like 
LISP's invention of macros), but even then it's that particular component 
that's the invention, not the whole language.

I guess one way to sum it up would be:

Common Noun: Invention
Proper Noun: Not an Invention

At least that's the way I see it.