synonyms

[Richard Gaskin]

Richmond Mathewson wrote:

 > I think that it is probably generally true that the more synonyms
 > and ways of saying the same thing a language has, the easier it is
 > to learn.
 >
 > This is also borne out by Linguistic research.

Linguistics for communicating with humans follows different rules than 
the linguistics used for communicating with machines.

Their purpose and scope is vastly different, so it should not be 
surprising that what is "best" for one isn't necessarily "best" in another.

Indeed, most natural languages have no "best"; only artificial languages 
like Esperanto and the older Boontling are "designed" at all.  Natural 
languages are multi-millennial accidents-in-the-making.

In stark contrast. programming languages have a very narrow scope, and 
are not only explicitly designed by necessity, but usually quite 
narrowly, as they attempt to communicate with a machine too stupid to 
count past 1.

Consider Python, the world's fourth-most-popular language, and perhaps 
the leading language for introducing newcomers to programming.

Among the core principles of Python's language design is:

"There should be one-- and preferably only one --obvious way to do it."
- Guido van Rossum
<http://python-history.blogspot.com/2009/01/pythons-design-philosophy.html>

-- 
  Richard Gaskin
  Fourth World Systems
  Software Design and Development for the Desktop, Mobile, and the Web
  ____________________________________________________________________
  Ambassador at FourthWorld.com                http://www.FourthWorld.com