Automation

[Mark Lawrence]

On 15/11/2013 06:44, Steven D'Aprano wrote:
> On Thu, 14 Nov 2013 17:10:02 +0000, Mark Lawrence wrote:
>
>> On 14/11/2013 03:56, renato.barbosa.pim.pereira at gmail.com wrote:
>>> I apologize again for my bad english and any inconvenience that I have
>>> generated.
>>>
>>>
>> I do wish that people would stop apologising for poor English, it's an
>> extremely difficult language.  IIRC there are eight different ways of
>> pronouncing the vowel combination au.  Whatever happened to "There
>> should be one-- and preferably only one --obvious way to do it."? :)
>
> Words like "sorry", "pardon me", etc. are the social grease to smooth out
> interactions between people. Instead, I read such apologies as a flag
> that we ought to make allowances for any grammatical or spelling errors
> they may make, rather than to interpret them as signs of laziness or
> stupidity.
>
> I'm inclined to forgive nearly any language error from somebody who is
> trying their best to communicate, while people who merely cannot be
> bothered to use language which is at least an approximation to
> grammatically correct, syntactically valid, correctly-spelled sentences
> inspire similar apathy in me. If they can't be bothered to write as well
> as they are capable of, I can't be bothered to answer their questions.
>
> A few minor errors is one thing, but when you see people whose posts are
> full of error after error and an apparent inability to get English syntax
> right, you have to wonder how on earth they expect to be a programmer?
> Compilers are even less forgiving of errors than is my wife, and she once
> kicked a man to death for using a colon where a semi-colon was required.
> (Only joking. He didn't actually die.)

Semi-colons or more accurately the lack of them, used to be the bain of 
my life.  Good old CORAL 66 had its BEGIN, END and COMMENT (maybe in 
single quotes?), but there was no ENDCOMMENT, no guesses how it was 
spelt.  Could have retired years ago...

>
> This doesn't apply to people who gave some sort of sign that they're
> doing the best that they can, whether it is due to inexperience,
> dyslexia, being Foreign *wink*, or even broken keyboard. ("Nw kyboard is
> on ordr, pls xcus my lack of lttr aftr D and b4 F.")

I had another wonderful day yesterday hacking foreigners to bits and 
burning them, great fun.  Is the last part above in parentheses meant to 
be related to a broken keyboard or is it simply modern textspeak?

>
> But it does amuse me when non-native English speakers apologise, then
> write a post which is better written, more clear, and far more articulate
> than the native English speakers :-)
>

I wish you'd written "clearer" rather than "more clear", this would have 
shown that your English is good like what mine is.

-- 
Python is the second best programming language in the world.
But the best has yet to be invented.  Christian Tismer

Mark Lawrence