Asked on Reddit: Which of Rust, D, Go, Nim, and Crystal is the strongest and why?

Laeeth Isharc via Digitalmars-d digitalmars-d at puremagic.com
Tue Jun 16 09:34:58 PDT 2015


On Tuesday, 16 June 2015 at 08:54:01 UTC, Chris wrote:
> So the implication that use of the nonstandard form would lead 
> to confusion is pure pedantry."

Yes, indeed.

Much of the difficulty with discussions of language in the modern 
world comes from not making a distinction between its denotative 
and connotative aspects.  The former relates to what is actually 
being said, and the latter to all the other thoughts and 
impressions that are evoked by saying it in that way.

Modern people emphasize excessively the denotative aspects, 
whereas connotations do matter since - as the neuroscience tells 
us - there are subtle priming effects and there are consequences 
from shifting the brain into different modes.

That's perhaps also in part why people do care about syntax in 
computer languages, even though at one level anything precise 
might be felt to do the job.

Back to your point, many non-Western cultures have different 
kinds of speech according to the social context.  That's because 
wanting to do so is a human group thing, not a DWEM thing.  Of 
course in the past years there was a relaxation of standards of 
formality due to concerns over it creating a noxious and 
unwarranted exclusivity.  That may have been a good thing in some 
ways.  But I think every human group will ultimately need to 
retain distinctions between different registers of speaking and 
writing...


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