[xquery-talk] here it comes, yet another version of XQuery and/or JSONiq

[Kristian Kankainen]

Hello

Dana, not to defend those guys, but to describe my understanding of how 
those guys think ...

I think it has to do with our more general, call it cognitive, human 
language capacities. It is much easier for humans to use the metaphors 
that they allready know, than it is to learn new metaphors. Thus, I 
think sadly, it is "easier" for people to (re-)invent a language based 
on their own underlying metaphors, than to learn the metaphors that are 
implicit in any allready existing language. Languages and the metaphors 
they get fuelled by are so totally meshed together it is hard to tell 
them apart, thus it is easier to keep them apart by reinventing them.

The above is totally philosophical and has perhaps nothing to do with 
computer languages nor with human cognitive skills (since it tends to be 
utterly hard to prove them) and reflects only my own thoughts.

The above has come to me mainly while reflecting Alan Kay's saga. His 
object-orientation(ism), graphical user interfaces or even his saying 
that "with a good enough programming language, there is no need for an 
operating system". I mean, the world as I know it (I was born long after 
Alan Kay thought of those things) seems to have understood absolutely 
nothing of what he was trying to tell! And most upsetting is that I have 
real hard times trying to understand Kay's world so that I can give my 
child a computer with SmallTalk instead of an absurd touchscreen device 
that calls itself smart.

You are good at guessing games and it is really sad to see history 
repeat itself. Guessing kind of implies something repeating. Alan Kay 
has also criticized computer science to be a popular culture.

Kristian K


10.06.2015 06:07, daniela florescu kirjutas:
> https://developer.mulesoft.com/docs/display/37M1/Overview
>
> Why do people have so much fun reinventing stuff that was DEFINITELY not fun to specify in the first
> place !???
>
> I will never understand how those guys think….
>
> Dana
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