Path: csiph.com!v102.xanadu-bbs.net!xanadu-bbs.net!usenet.blueworldhosting.com!feeder01.blueworldhosting.com!border2.nntp.dca1.giganews.com!nntp.giganews.com!news.iecc.com!.POSTED!nerds-end From: Kartik Agaram Newsgroups: comp.compilers Subject: Re: A Plain English Compiler Date: Mon, 27 Oct 2014 12:25:05 -0700 Organization: Compilers Central Lines: 32 Sender: news@iecc.com Approved: comp.compilers@iecc.com Message-ID: <14-10-009@comp.compilers> References: <06-02-122@comp.compilers> <06-02-125@comp.compilers> <14-10-005@comp.compilers> <14-10-008@comp.compilers> NNTP-Posting-Host: news.iecc.com Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" X-Trace: miucha.iecc.com 1414439793 87974 2001:470:1f07:1126:0:676f:7373:6970 (27 Oct 2014 19:56:33 GMT) X-Complaints-To: abuse@iecc.com NNTP-Posting-Date: Mon, 27 Oct 2014 19:56:33 +0000 (UTC) Keywords: parse, history, comment Posted-Date: 27 Oct 2014 15:56:32 EDT X-submission-address: compilers@iecc.com X-moderator-address: compilers-request@iecc.com X-FAQ-and-archives: http://compilers.iecc.com Xref: csiph.com comp.compilers:1394 > John said (back in 2006) "You can certainly chop English down to > a small unambiguous subset, but then you've just reinvented Cobol" > > As someone who has had to work with COBOL somewhat, it is interesting > to compare the two languages: Thanks for that detail! The discussion in 2006 seemed too dismissive of this idea, and I worried that this go-around would subside similarly. Comparing all attempts at english-like pidgins to cobol seems like a cheap and overly broad shot. Hopefully now we can have a more substantive discussion. I unpacked the zipfile in the original kickstarter link ( http://www.osmosian.com/cal-3040.zip) and found the thousands of lines of punctuation-free code startlingly alien yet attractive (see attached screenshot). I had a similar reaction to the 100+ page manual written in comic sans (http://www.osmosian.com/instructions.pdf). This isn't cobol at all, and it's worth engaging with on its own terms. I wish I could play with building the sources without resorting to an untrusted .exe on a windows machine. How was the executable generated? Does each new version bootstrap using the previous one? Kartik http://akkartik.name/about [COBOL has an undeserved poor reputation largely among people who've never used it. Yes, it's wordy, deliberately so, and its faciilities for control structure are weak by modern standards, but it invented the structured data we now take for granted in languages like C and C++ and has a wider range of datatypes than most of its successors. For its time and its intended application it was a huge success. -John]