> Hackernews armchair linguists seem to think an ideal language for world communication can somehow be engineered from some small set of primitives, like Scheme
I see we have met. My ideal computer language would be Scheme in Ido. :) I guess to do real work one needs a ~980 page spec like Common Lisp which consumes half of their available neurons--in English, which consumes the other half. The R7RS spec is ~98 pages, for reference. A few extensions do not remove that much cognitive availablity (see Jaffer's Slib and the SRFI suite). As a matter of fact, speaking of minimalism, I was using MIT Scheme Version 7.4 Edwin today, an Emacs compatible editor written at R4RS (with a few extensions).
Seriously though, I really wish like the universal translator in Star Trek that I could understand all human language with deep context--but my puny U.S.-public-school-trained brain limits me to a few.
I see we have met. My ideal computer language would be Scheme in Ido. :) I guess to do real work one needs a ~980 page spec like Common Lisp which consumes half of their available neurons--in English, which consumes the other half. The R7RS spec is ~98 pages, for reference. A few extensions do not remove that much cognitive availablity (see Jaffer's Slib and the SRFI suite). As a matter of fact, speaking of minimalism, I was using MIT Scheme Version 7.4 Edwin today, an Emacs compatible editor written at R4RS (with a few extensions).
Seriously though, I really wish like the universal translator in Star Trek that I could understand all human language with deep context--but my puny U.S.-public-school-trained brain limits me to a few.