Constant 'Nonsense' about RR documentation

[Dennis Brown]

On Nov 27, 2005, at 4:17 PM, jbv wrote:

>> Transcript is different enough from other popular languages,
>
> in what is it different (beside the fact that it's much closer to
> natural english than any other language) ? just asking...
>> uses
>> different terms and metaphors,
>
> same question as above... again, just asking...
>
>> and is so rich and complex in its
>> capabilities that it takes understanding beyond the deceptively
>> simple surface to get an idea of what one can really accomplish with
>> it.
>
> IMHO this could be said also about C or PHP or...
>
> so what makes Transcript so specific (beside the fact that it's used
> only by happy few) ?

I usually need to approach a problem from the side instead of the  
bottom or top if I want the solution to be fast and elegant.  It is  
the more unusual parts of the language that have the true power.  It  
is obviously not different in concept than other xTalks, but xTalks  
are not the usual language of choice for developers.  Having keyed  
arrays opens up new approaches, but lack of fixed ones can make  
others painful.  Data structures need to be approached differently.   
Spending a year on this list has opened my eyes to approaches that  
are different than what I would have considered the straight forward  
way of doing things (for a computer).  The old hands seem to be  
frequently surprising each other with insights into how things work  
and how to approach simple problems in unusual ways that work  
better.  Of course once you spend a few years learning to think in  
Latin (oops, I mean Transcript), it all seems natural.

Dennis