[Article Context, First Draft] Concurrency, Parallelism and D

[Daniel Gibson]

Am 10.04.2011 06:04, schrieb Jonathan M Davis:
>> Am 10.04.2011 04:27, schrieb dsimcha:
>>> On 4/9/2011 10:22 PM, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
>>>> On 04/09/2011 08:31 PM, dsimcha wrote:
>>>>> On 4/9/2011 7:56 PM, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
>>>>>> I think the article's title is missing a comma btw.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Andrei
>>>>>
>>>>> Where?
>>>>
>>>> Where could it ever be? After "parallelism".
>>>>
>>>> Andrei
>>>
>>> Actually, I specifically remember learning about this grammar rule in
>>> middle school.  When listing stuff, the comma before the "and" is
>>> optional.  Putting it and not putting it are both correct.
>>
>> Having both "and" and the comma seems redundant to me.
>>
>> But I'm German and we don't have a comma before and ("und") in lists* so
>> maybe I'm just not used to it.
>>
>> Cheers,
>> - Daniel
>>
>> * an Exception is when a subordinate clause ends before the "and", like
>> in "I know programming languages like C, D, which kicks ass, and Java"
> 
> I'm sure that the wikipedia article goes into a fair bit of detail on it, but 
> there are cases where the lack of the comma leads to ambiguity. I believe that 
> the current recommendation is to always put the comma in, but it's bound to 
> depend on who you talk to - even among English teachers.
> 
> - Jonathan M Davis

You can always have ambiguities, e.g.
"I know programming languages like C, D, my favorite, Java and Haskell"
- does "my favorite" belong to the list or does it describe D? And
shouldn't there be two commas after "favorite" (for me this kind of
feels like a missing closing bracket)?

Or, a slightly altered version of a wikipedia example:
"Among those interviewed were his three ex-wives, Kris Kristofferson,
Horst Hacker and Robert Duvall." - are Kris, Horst and Robert his
ex-wives (same problem like in the original wikipedia example)?
Alternative version:
"Among those interviewed were his three ex-wives, Kris Kristofferson,
Horst Hacker, and Robert Duvall." - not better at all: It's not clear
whether "Kris Kristofferson, Horst Hacker, and Robert Duvall" is a list
of ex-wives (it's a list, so we put a comma before the and etc) or if
"his three ex-wives, Kris Kristofferson, Horst Hacker, and Robert
Duvall." is a list of six people.
So I think a comma before "and" doesn't help very much in solving
ambiguities.

Cheers,
- Daniel