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by stellar678 5694 days ago
I would be fascinated to see several hundred years down the road how natural languages and computer languages have comingled and evolved into something new. I'd be inclined to believe that bringing natural language to computers won't just be a one-way street.

You already see this in places like hacker news here where people often use constructs like "s/thing/other thing/" because it's more concise and useful than writing out the natural language version.
2 comments
alanh 5694 days ago
I upvoted you. But I am not sure that "/thing/other thing/" is more concise or useful than all alternatives.

"thing" → "other thing" is the same length, and while not natural language, it isn’t a computer language.

I think using the sed-like (right?) language is more useful as a signaller. Check it out, yo, I grep shit all the time.

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silentbicycle 5694 days ago
The whole s/X/Y/ thing is very Unix, and is a (sub)cultural signifier as much as anything. I'm not sure if it's originally from ed, sed, or what, but most people (self included) probably picked it up from vi (nvi/vim/etc.) or perl.

X->Y makes just as much sense, but the s (for "substitute") makes it mnemonic - I read it as "sub X for Y".

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aaronblohowiak 5694 days ago
ed gave rise to sed and vi. ed -> em -> ex (VIsual mode). vim is Vi iMproved.

x->y suggests lambda to many people in our community.

Edit: I meant to provide some additional information to other readers, not to disagree in any way.

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silentbicycle 5694 days ago
Well, right, but how many people here have actually used ed standalone? (lone hand) It's overwhelmingly likely that most people picked it up from vi(m).
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ctkrohn 5694 days ago
This is comes up in Charles Stross's novel "Accelerando." He imagines a relatively near future where children grow up speaking partially synthetic languages. It's one of my favorite novels; you can read it online, too: http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/fiction/accelera...

Stross is also an occasional commenter here on HN.

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akkartik 5694 days ago
Crazy and hilarious to think Twitter didn't exist then, and the only web 2.0 term to make it in was 'blog'.
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