From: pat hayes ([email protected])
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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