In article <335476A5.18EA@maths.anu.edu.au>, graham.matthews@maths.anu.edu.au
says...
>
>
>> In article <33545E78.4983@maths.anu.edu.au>, Graham Matthews
>> +No its not irrelevant. The question was why did JO chose the "everything
>> +is a string" paradigm, when he could have chosen the "everything is an
>> +integer", or "everything is a list" paradigm? This correspondence shows
>> +the stupidity of the "everything is a string is so powerful" argument.
>Michael L. Siemon wrote:
>> Sorry, but that does not follow. Bijections are all very well (hey, I'm
>> a topologist by training :-)), but human predispositions are relevant
>> here, and most people are more intuitively at home with "reading" a
>> string "1.0 + 3" as a sequence of characters than, e.g., processing a
>> text into a Goedel enumeration, (or more directly to the point, going
>> the other way, from the integer to the text.)
>
>You have missed the point! I am arguing against the claim that
>"everything is a string is so *powerful*". This claim is rubbish since
>"everything is a list" is just as powerful.
"everything" is a list. hmm. so what should this do:
((()((()((()()))(()))))((()())))
i think we'd want a little more than just lists. not even Lisp constrains us
to just lists; it's got symbols, namespaces, strings, characters, umpteen kinds
of numbers; some lisps have structures, objects, classes, closures...
>This leads to the question of why do you think the "everything is a
>string" approach is so convenient. As far as I can see its less
>convenient than allowing a mixture of typed objects.
"everything as strings" is convenient because in most languages, programs
actually exist as a string at some stage - as their original source code. tcl
goes through a minimum of fuss converting source to internal form.
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