mejutoco

I think you also believe this, we only disagree in which grammatical forms. Or are you arguing that "Why waste time say lot word when few word do trick?" is grammatically correct?

If you are, then it is consistent with your popular-makes-correct approach as long as people say it. Whatever mistake stops being a mistake if repeated by enough people; if not, then we agree and only disagree on where the line is.

No bad feelings anyway. Nice chat.

Comment · 11 days ago

I am not annoyed, I choose one side over the other in this debate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fewer_versus_less

You always have authorities like dictionaries and English usage references. There are some supporting each side of this debate in the link above.

> if a substantial body of people use English in a way that you dislike then it's just tough shit I'm afraid

There is no need for that language. hn is supposed to be a place of civil (and playful) discussion. I also already anticipated that take in my post.

> If instead we prefer to attribute it to class and say using the correct or wrong way is a class signifier and that both are correct, and that language depends on usage and there are no grammar rules really but only consensus, we can also do that

> You don't speak Elizabethan English, or Regency English, or late Saxon, or Old English, but you presumably don't think those are "wrong"

Because nobody actually talks like that, that's why. Joking. You introduced the time dimension, which complicates the comparison. If somebody claimed those are all correct ways of speaking in modern English, and only class signifiers, in that context, I would say they are wrong.

In general I dislike this nihilist "truth does not exist" nobody-is-wrong take. That is why I prefer the simple rule with countable and uncountable without the class excuse. Ultimately both takes are valid, but I find the second one too nihilist for my taste.

If people one day start saying "me thinks this good" you might find yourself changing sides arguing that truth does, in fact, exist.

Comment · 12 days ago

> There is a very good reason why, in coding, we give descriptive variable names such as "accountBalance" rather than "b".

In languages with an expressive typesystem you see a lot more single letter variables.

> We're not doing equations here, we're doing engineering

This sentence is nonsense.

> Conciseness is not a virtue in programming. Clarity is

I see what you are saying, but conciseness is also related to clarity, as I showed with the theorem.

Comment · 12 days ago

> is in practice often used by native English speakers for both count and non-count nouns

Alternative explanation: native speakers are wrong sometimes.

It really boils down to:

- Less + uncountable noun (money, energy, code, sand)

- fewer + countable noun (trees, cars, grains, volts, coins)

If instead we prefer to attribute it to class and say using the correct or wrong way is a class signifier and that both are correct, and that language depends on usage and there are no grammar rules really but only consensus, we can also do that. But then "Why waste time say lot word when few word do trick?".

I prefer the first explanation.

P.S. Same with "if I were" turning into "if I was". I guess usage turned that one, and that is fine too. I make that mistake often.

In Spanish these guys (https://www.rae.es/duda-linguistica/el-nombre-de-la-y-es-i-g...) also officially changed the name of "y" (i griega) to "ye". The argument: it is easier for new speakers. I will say "i griega" forever I am afraid.

Comment · 13 days ago

> having a mathlib dependency just to build a programming language is a big ask for people.

This is an implementation choice you did when implementing your programming language, if I understand correctly.

I thought of it because writing some lean lang I also had the option of adding Mathlib or keep it "bare".

Comment · 13 days ago

If you want text _in addition to_ regex you can use comments in regex, like in https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/1783...

> Should equations in math also use full words and comments?

My "also" referred not to have multiple representations but to also in math have prose instead of equations. I could have expressed it better. I did not think of that interpretation.

As for math, I really do not think that is true. Look at how this beautiful proof is so long in prose.

https://mathcs.clarku.edu/~djoyce/java/elements/bookI/propI4...

Is that better than a^2+b^2 = c^2 ?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pythagorean_theorem

Notation helps to be concise. Imagine more complicated things without notation in maths. Of course if you look at Principia Matematica we see the limits of notation as well.

Comment · 13 days ago

Regex in xml? Now you have 2 problems. And the comments are not xml comments even.

Ultimately it is a dsl. Should equations in math also use full words and comments?

No, they should not. Maybe a nice syntax for grammars like raku is a better approach.