ir230@sdcc6.ucsd.edu (john wavrik) (11/23/89)
> (Let's be realistic: do you really think a requirement for specific > internal design would be adhered to by one of the most independantly minded > programming communities in existance --Forth programmers? Any such Standard > would be dead on arrival.) Mathematicians tend to be independently minded too -- but at some point in history they decided to agree on the shapes used for the numerals and the base to be used for the number system. They also agree on a set of basic assumptions (axioms) and definitions. Without this agreement, progress in mathematics would be impossible. It would not be considered creative in mathematics to change the shape of 8 (arguing that a different shape would allow us to write it more quickly) or to suggest that we change the number base from 10 to 12. And it would be total disaster to leave such foundational things "implementation dependent". The foundations on which we agree are highly portable and are extensive enough to support the superstructure of the subject. Lots of independent minded people have made contributions to mathematics without feeling stifled by sharing a common language and a common set of basic assumptions on which to build -- they show their independence at a higher level. There is an historical precedent for what I am suggesting. About 10 years ago, a group of independently minded programmers decided to make a new language available to the general public. They implemented their model on about a dozen of the most popular processors of the time. Most people who got past the unconventional nature of the language found it almost supernaturally powerful. (Much of the supernatural power derived from the fact that the implementation was part of the language.) It was also supernaturally portable: the main barrier to getting code written on one computer to run on another was getting the code transferred (modems were rare and expensive at the time). There are very few computer languages that can support the kind of development seen in mathematics. For a language to do so, it must be built on a small and commonly agreed upon foundation -- and the foundation must be extensive and powerful enough to allow users to add features to the language. I have evidence to believe that such a language could be built with an agreement on about 100 basic commands, and a rather mild agreement about how the language should function. I think such a language can be made competitively fast and would offer, in terms of flexibility, an enormous alternative to most of the computer languages now in existence. John J Wavrik jjwavrik@ucsd.edu Dept of Math C-012 Univ of Calif - San Diego La Jolla, CA 92093