Today's poem

[Alf P. Steinbach]

Shamelessly stolen, rerarranged & fused, from Norwegian Hamsun & Danish Hein:

you can easily forgive a better superior,
and you do
but you can never forgive an equal or inferior
who is, somehow, better than you


Cheers,

- Alf

PS: Oh, C++ content, I forgot, but, anyway.

 

[osmium]

Shamelessly stolen, rerarranged & fused, from Norwegian Hamsun & Danish
Hein:

you can easily forgive a better superior,
and you do
but you can never forgive an equal or inferior
who is, somehow, better than you

I listen to, and like, a lot of Danish vocal singing and I get the
impression, just from listening, that there is much less vowel usage in
Danish compared to other European languages. It sounds like you really
have to work at it to get it to come out right. Is it possible I am right?

 

[Jorgen Grahn]

I listen to, and like, a lot of Danish vocal singing and I get the
impression, just from listening, that there is much less vowel usage in
Danish compared to other European languages. It sounds like you really
have to work at it to get it to come out right. Is it possible I am right?

1) Alf appears to be norwegian, so he probably speaks one of those
languages rather than Danish
2) Swedes like to think that spoken Danish is like speaking with one's
mouth full of hot potatoes ... I guess that translates to *more* vowels
than Swedish

(No disrepect intended, of course. I hear they design good programming
languages.)

/Jorgen

 

[James Kanze]

I doubt it. I suspect that most of the Germanic languages
(including English) are fairly similar in this respect.

1) Alf appears to be norwegian, so he probably speaks one of those
languages rather than Danish

Ah, but which one? Norway has two legal written languages, and
from what I understand, neither corresponds exactly to how the
language is spoken (which, like most languages, varies from
place to place as well). And if I'm not mistaken, Norway's
greatest author (Ibsen) wrote in Danish (although I think the
differences between Danish and Bokmål are fairly small).

2) Swedes like to think that spoken Danish is like speaking
with one's mouth full of hot potatoes ... I guess that
translates to *more* vowels than Swedish

I think it translates to the fact that the tonal accent in
Swedish is replaced by a gotteral stop in Danish.

(No disrepect intended, of course. I hear they design good
programming languages.)

I've sometimes wondered if there isn't some sort of relationship
between national (or regional) culture and a orientation in
computer science. Scandinavians have, on the whole, played a
remarkable role in object oriented software, from Dahl and
Nygaard on. The two major "inventors" of template
meta-programming in C++ (David Vandevoorde and Todd Veldhuizen)
are both Belgians, and Germans (Dietmar Külh, Angelika Langer,
etc.) seem to dominate among the experts in iostreams. On the
other hand, some coincidences are to be expected. I have a
hard time finding a common theme for the three languages
invented by Frenchmen: Eiffel, Ada and Prolog. And the
relationship between Stroustrup and OO can be explained by the
fact that Nygaard was one of his profs at the University of
Aarhus; the Scandinavian connection is probably more one of
direct contact than of any inborn or cultural orientation.

 

[Daveed]

 The two major "inventors" of template
meta-programming in C++ (David Vandevoorde and Todd Veldhuizen)
are both Belgians,

While "Veldhuizen" is a very Belgian name, Todd is actually Canadian :-
P

and Germans (Dietmar Külh, Angelika Langer,
etc.) seem to dominate among the experts in iostreams.  On the
other hand, some coincidences are to be expected.  I have a
hard time finding a common theme for the three languages
invented by Frenchmen: Eiffel, Ada and Prolog.

I think there is a certain blend of rigor and pragmatism in all three
languages that is perhaps a reflection of the French academic culture?

Daveed

 

[James Kanze]

[...]

The two major "inventors" of template meta-programming in
C++ (David Vandevoorde and Todd Veldhuizen) are both
Belgians,

While "Veldhuizen" is a very Belgian name, Todd is actually
Canadian :- P

I don't know what made me thing he was Belgian---the name could
also just as easily been Dutch, but for some reason, I was sure
he was Belgian. I know he is currently based in Canada, but
then, you're currently based in the U.S.

I think there is a certain blend of rigor and pragmatism in
all three languages that is perhaps a reflection of the French
academic culture?

Maybe. Or perhaps, at least in the case of Eiffel and Prolog,
the tradition of being stubornly different. ("L'exception
culturelle".)