[antlr-interest] philosophy about translation

[Anthony W. Youngman]

In message <45421853.3080907 at jazillian.com>, Andy Tripp 
<antlr at jazillian.com> writes
>>> For the record, I had no trouble "getting" LISP when I learned it 25 
>>>years ago. When I started with C++, I don't think I
>>> really "got" OOD, and only started writing real OO code when 
>>>learning Java forced me to. I think the fact that LISP never
>>> became "mainstream" means that it failed to be easy enough to grasp. 
>>>Regardless of how inherently beautiful it is,
>>> if a lot of programmers don't easily "get it", then it's not that great.
>>
>>
>> The trouble is, the "average" programmer is just that, average.
>>
>> A great programmer can do the work of ten ordinary programmers. The 
>>trouble is, he probably does it with tools that are beyond the ability 
>>the ordinary programmer to "get".
>
>Just to be clear, I'm not saying I'm an "average" programmer or looking 
>for tools for the "average" programmer.
>I might be in the top 2% of all programmers, but I'm not in the top 
>0.1% of language-tools-gurus as Terence is.
>So I want tools that helps us good-programmers-but-not-compiler-gurus 
>build stuff.
>I'm not a Terence looking to automate my parser-creation task;
>I'm just an Andy looking to build a language translator while barely 
>knowing the difference between LL(*) and LL(k).

I think you've missed my point :-) "Regardless of how inherently 
beautiful it is, if a lot of programmers don't easily "get it", then 
it's not that great."

If it really *is* great, then the chances are the majority of 
programmers *can't* 'easily "get it" '.

I understand your problems with language translation - I still haven't 
got to grips with Java, and I'm struggling with Antlr, lexing/parsing 
etc. Thing is, you've got to learn the tools available to you. And if 
you're tackling something hard (it sounds like you are :-) then either 
(a) the task is beyond your abilities, or (b) the task is beyond your 
tools' abilities, or (c) the tools will be difficult and hard to learn.

You say you're probably in "the top 2% of programmers". In other words, 
if you think a tool "is great", the chances are that a lot (the 
majority?) of programmers WON'T easily get it - in fact - quite likely - 
CAN'T "get it" AT ALL!

So don't dismiss tools because they're hard to grasp. My brother thought 
Emacs was a user-friendly disaster-area until he really needed a 
power-editor. Then he realised how friendly it really was ...

Cheers,
Wol
-- 
Anthony W. Youngman - anthony at thewolery.demon.co.uk