how to name a function in a comp lang (design)

[Marc Mientki]

Am 20.10.2010 14:07, schrieb Xah Lee:
> On Oct 20, 4:52 am, Marc Mientki<mien... at nonet.com>  wrote:
>> Am 20.10.2010 13:14, schrieb Xah Lee:
>>
>>> See also:
>>
>>> • 〈The Importance of Terminology's Quality In Computer Languages〉
>>> http://xahlee.org/UnixResource_dir/writ/naming_functions.html
>>
>>> where i gave some examples of the naming.
>>
>>     "I'd like to introduce a blog post by Stephen Wolfram, on the design
>> process of Mathematica. In particular, he touches on the importance of
>> naming of functions."
>>
>>     "The functions in Mathematica, are usually very well-named, in
>> contrast to most other computing languages."
>>
>>     "Let me give a few example. [...]"
>
> thanks for your post. didn' t know you also use Mathematica.

Not anymore, unfortunately. New job = no Mathematica. I tried with 
Maxima, but it is considered syntactically Middle Ages. Terribly 
confused (vectors, arrays, matrix, lists, sets - maxima does not know 
the motto of "list for everything").


>> It is much easier to improve something good than to invent from scratch.
>> When Lisp was born, Stephen Wolfram was still wearing diapers.
>>
>> For your information: Mathematica was my first Lisp-like language. I
>> used it about 10 years almost every day and I love it because of the
>> beauty of the concept. But Mathematica has two serious problems: first,
>> there is only one implementation and it is commercial, and secondly,
>> Mathematica is very, very slowly and does not generate executable code
>> that can be used without Mathematica itself. Thus, comparisons to other
>> languages, such as Lisp are not fair.
>
> you are right... thought these aspects don't have much to do with
> function naming.

Yes. I have it written because I see that you like to call Mathematica 
as a counter-example, in many cases.


> i tend to think that Mathematica is that way due to a unique mind,
> Stephen Wolfram. And if i may say, i share much mindset with him with
> respect to many lang design issues.

Yes, me too, alone but for performance reasons, Mathematica in the area 
where I work (image processing) is not suitable. I mean - not research 
or rapid prototyping, but industrial image processing.


> (or rather, Mathematica was my
> first lang for about 6 years too)

Mathematica = first language at all? No FORTRAN/BASIC/Pascal/C?


regards
Marc