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Date: Sun, 15 Sep 2013 09:57:57 +0200
From: Antoon Pardon <antoon.pardon@rece.vub.ac.be>
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Subject: Re: Language design
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Xref: csiph.com comp.lang.python:54184

Op 15-09-13 04:37, Mark Janssen schreef:

>>>
>>> Ha,  "only the direction reversed".  That little directionality that
>>> you're passing by so blithely is the difference between whether you're
>>> talking about galaxies or atoms.
>>
>> It makes no difference whether I write:
>>
>>      atoms -> stars -> galaxies
>>
>> or
>>
>>      galaxies <- stars <- atoms
>>
>> nor does it make any difference if I write the chain starting at the top
>> and pointing down, or at the bottom and pointing up.
>
> Here again, your sanity is questioned.  You are simply wrong.  Atoms
> lie within galaxies, but galaxies do not lie within atoms (poetic
> license excluded);

No body is questioning that. What is being pointed out is, that it 
doesn't make a difference whether you say that atoms lie within galaxies 
or you say galaxies have atoms in them. It doesn't matter which of the 
items you mention first in defining the relation between the two.

> i.e. there is a difference, whether your talking
> about syntactically by the parser or conceptually by a human being.
> Somewhere you have to put yourself in the middle.  And that point
> defines how you relate to the machine -- towards abstraction (upwards)
> or towards the concrete (to the machine itself).

Maybe, but where you put yourself is not determined by such unimportant 
details as to which of the components in a relation you mention first. a 
< b or b > a, are two ways to write the exact same relation and someone 
arguing that there is an important difference because in the first case 
we mention a first while in the second case we mention b first is only 
illustrating his own confusion. And that is essentially
what you are doing.

-- 
Antoon Pardon