Path: csiph.com!v102.xanadu-bbs.net!xanadu-bbs.net!feeder.erje.net!eu.feeder.erje.net!news-1.dfn.de!news.dfn.de!news.informatik.hu-berlin.de!fu-berlin.de!uni-berlin.de!individual.net!not-for-mail From: Neil Cerutti Newsgroups: comp.lang.python Subject: Re: [Off topic] Software epigrams Date: 13 May 2013 18:42:28 GMT Organization: Norwich University Lines: 20 Message-ID: References: <5190b049$0$29978$c3e8da3$5496439d@news.astraweb.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Trace: individual.net 70/lvUoQFYl4Jj7ykxEDeg4qjwhik3Fm7L8n7kOi6nHGFR3ha4 Cancel-Lock: sha1:eohRN8VOanjQavZs2zAfQa+SL2I= User-Agent: slrn/0.9.9p1/mm/ao (Win32) Xref: csiph.com comp.lang.python:45261 On 2013-05-13, Skip Montanaro wrote: >> 8. A programming language is low level when its programs >> require attention to the irrelevant. >> >> So much a matter of debate. Indentation is irrelevant, why >> should Python programs pay attention to it? Block delimiters >> are irrelevant too, the interpreter should be able to figure >> them out from the code layout. But this one is absolutely >> right: > > I think "irrelevant" in this context means stuff like memory > management. I thought I liked that one at first, but upon reflection it speciously inserts the word "irrelevant" in order to avoid stating a tautology: A programming language is low level when its programs require attention to low level details. -- Neil Cerutti