Concatenative vs Compositional

Christopher Diggins — 2006-05-02 15:57:01

I was wondering why the term "concatenative" was chosen over the term

"compositional"? The semantics of the Joy language if oftern explained as

function composition contrasted with function application. "Concatenation"

is simply a description of the syntax. Any thoughts?





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sa@dfa.com — 2006-05-02 16:06:16

charles peirce (the inventor of pragmatism) renamed his doctrine

"pragmaticism" after william james started using the original.

the new term, peirce thought, was "so ugly that no one else would

be tempted to steal it."





concatenative@yahoogroups.com wrote on 05/02/2006 11:57:01 AM:



 > I was wondering why the term "concatenative" was chosen over the term

> "compositional"? The semantics of the Joy language if oftern explained as

> function composition contrasted with function application.

 
"Concatenation"

 > is simply a description of the syntax. Any thoughts?

>

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> Yahoo! Groups Links

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William Tanksley, Jr — 2006-05-02 23:16:24

Christopher Diggins <cdiggins@...> wrote:

 > I was wondering why the term "concatenative" was chosen over the term

> "compositional"? The semantics of the Joy language if oftern explained as

> function composition contrasted with function application. "Concatenation"

> is simply a description of the syntax. Any thoughts?



 
I've been blamed for that choice. I think it makes sense to me in that

"concatenative" describes an elementary property of the language type

that describes both the semantics and syntax: the concatenation of any

two valid programs is another valid program.



A compositional language wouldn't be concatenative if it used

parentheses and parsing rules, as with J (J is only partially

compositional, of course; that wasn't its purpose).



-Billy