Perl is worse! (was: Python is Wierd!)

[Ben Wolfson]

On Fri, 28 Jul 2000 08:04:45 GMT, grey at despair.rpglink.com (Steve Lamb)
wrote:

>On 28 Jul 2000 19:46:29 +1200, Paul Foley <see at below> wrote:
>>The distinction you're trying to make (between "types" and "just
>>data") is rather foolish.  Data are the things that have types.
>
>    Rather foolish?  For whom?  Humans don't think in "integer" and "long
>integers" or "strings".  We think in terms of data whose exact value, "type",
>is determined by context alone.
>
>    As a human, type 1.  Character?  String?  Integer?  Floating number?  No,
>it is 1 and it can be all of those all on context.  Types are a construct
>created to help computers deal with human concepts.  Why, then, when a
>language comes along that does a darn fine job of doing the right thing by
>defining data as a scalar (it isn't a string, it isn't an integer, it isn't
>floating point, it isn't a character, is can be all of them depending on
>context) do you call it "foolish" to think in those terms?

If I type 1, I think "integer".  Sorry.  This is true outside the realm of
programming.  If I'm talking to someone online and I want to express the
idea of a string containing the character '1', I will write "1" or '1'.

-- 
Barnabas T. Rumjuggler

His eyes are quickened so with grief,
He can watch a grass or leaf
Every instant grow.
 -- Robert Graves, some poem whose name I can't recall