[WikiEN-l] MediaWiki is getting a new programming language

[Neil Harris]

WJhonson at aol.com wrote:
> In a message dated 7/6/2009 12:12:15 AM Pacific Daylight Time, 
> stevagewp at gmail.com writes:
>
>
>   
>> Your point is made, understood, and soundly rebutted. An
>> "english-like" language is not desirable, feasible, or going to
>> happen.>>
>>     
>
> ----------------------
>
> I propose that A) you are not the authority invested in deciding this 
> issue; and B) your approach is overly antagonistic and confrontational.
>
> Will
>
>   
Will,

Although the point could have been put more tactfully, I think the 
salient point here is that "English-like" programming languages have 
been tried before many times, and have (with the possible exception of 
COBOL) consistently been rejected in favour of compact equation-like 
languages.

Consider the difference between the ease of writing, say, the Python-like

  print "%02x" % find(":", param[1])

or even the Lisp-like

  (print (fmt "%02x" (find ":" (param 1))))

compared to writing an "English-like" equivalent such as

  PRINT THE NUMBER OF CHARACTERS BEFORE THE FIRST OCCURRENCE OF THE 
COLON CHARACTER IN THE FIRST POSITIONAL PARAMETER FORMATTED AS A 
TWO-DIGIT ZERO-PADDED HEXADECIMAL NUMBER USING LOWERCASE LETTERS FOR THE 
HEX DIGITS A TO F

If you think this an unfair example, please could you show how your 
proposed English-like language would handle this example better than the 
above?

-- Neil