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From: buzzard@world.std.com (Sean T Barrett)
Subject: Re: Why Inform?
Message-ID: <G7sA9J.HtI@world.std.com>
Date: Fri, 26 Jan 2001 19:03:19 GMT
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Dave Holland  <dave@biff.org.uk> wrote:
>Adam Conover <acfoureightfour@bard.edu> wrote:
>> move cat to mat; seems bizarrely arbitrary.
>
>That's odd. I thought your English was pretty good...

Then consider the examples

   give door locked;
and
   if (cherries has moved) { ... }

Going too far down the 'englishization' leads to things like:

   if cherries has moved then give door locked.
   if cherries has moved then give door the attribute locked.
   if my_object is container then give door the attribute locked.
   if my object is container then give door the attribute locked.

Finally, if one finds "obj.MoveTo(location)" confusing, one
should not compare it to the phrase "move object to location"
but instead to the phrase "object, move to location", which
very closely parallels underlying meaning of that syntax (although
Smalltalk comes even closer by allowing a 'preposition' preceding
each parameter).

SeanB
