On: raising the semantic level of a program

[ben]

On 6/27/2020 8:49 AM, dwight via cctalk wrote:
> Hi Stan
>   It sounds a little like the way most good Forth programmers deal with problems. Forth is all about semantics. Every thing is a word. The complexity of the program is left to the low level stuff. When the program is done, it isn't a program written in Forth, it is a program written in the application. At the highest levels one should not see the language it was written in one should only see the application. Well written Forth at the upper levels has only : and ; of the language showing through. The rest are just the words in a sentence like structure telling what the application is doing.
> It is too bad that people insist on using languages that even at the highest level is still just a program in that particular language. All the boiler plate is still in the way of the program.
> Although, taking a little more time to get used to, Lisp is something like that as well. At least well written Lisp is. One can see what the intent is at the higher levels of coding. It is just learning to read the sentences. The lower level language part is how you move the bits and bytes around. The application should tell you what it does and why. Comments should only be needed at the more confusing lower levels. At the higher levels comments would and should be redundant. The words should tell you what is being done.
> Dwight

At what point do variable names end being comments?
There needs to be more work on proper documenting and writing
programs and modules. I am not a fan of objects and operator overloading 
because I never know just what the program is doing.
apples + oranges gives me what ? count of fruits, liters of fruit punch, 
a error?
It would be nice if one could define a new language for problem
solving and run it through compiler-compiler processor for interesting 
problems.
Ben.