RE: web worries

From: pat hayes (phayes@ai.uwf.edu)
Date: 10/09/00


>I remember my initial peevish reaction to moving from FORTRAN to ALGOL(in
>1972): why do I have to learn all this syntax to write a line of ALGOL, I
>thought, when I can do the same thing in only six or ten simple FORTRAN
>statements that I already know?  By the end of the course, I understood.

Bad example to make your case, Bob.  Some people still use Fortran, 
but does *anyone* still use ALGOL? (Want to compare ADA with C++ ?) 
And just to ream the point home, the point of all that extra ALGOL 
syntax was to indicate program structure: but XML is a language for 
describing labelled trees, that's all.  Its not hard to indicate tree 
structure. If God issued awards for the most brain-damaged, ugly and 
unnecessarily complicated notation for showing the structure of 
labelled trees, I wouldn't be able to beat XML.

<FarewellSalutation>
<SubClassOf resource= 
"http://www.MissManners.org/2000/10/Email-ont#Salutation" />
<label = "Farewell"/>
<ActualSalutationText>Best wishes</ActualSalutationText>
</FarewellSalutation>

Pat Hayes

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