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Re:CatalaLang/catala: Programming language for law specifica... by jeppester on Sunday September 17, 2023 @06:32PM (#37549961)
> Additionally, the law is not supposed to be some arcane discipline that you need to learn a new language for.

It would seem to me that reading laws has become an arcane discipline, partly due to it being expressed in a language with overly long sentences, which handles branches and references very poorly from a readability perspective.

> Imagine news anchors explaining that Biden agreed to add the lambda sign, but was heavily criticized by McConnell for his use of a monad instead of a plain for loop.

While that would surely be interesting to watch, I think we both know that's not what would happen.

Like I wouldn't ask you "number four plus sign number four equal sign X?"

Re:CatalaLang/catala: Programming language for law specifica... by tsimionescu on Sunday September 17, 2023 @06:49PM (#37550103)
I assure you that no one who fails to parse long sentences would get a better understanding from replacing those with code of all things.

And if the actual text of the law consisted of coding symbols, I very much expect that (a) you'd have endless debates about the precise symbols being used, and (b) have to have anchors going over the meaning of those symbols and losing 9/10ths of their audience along the way.

Re:CatalaLang/catala: Programming language for law specifica... by jeppester on Monday September 18, 2023 @02:25AM (#37552901)
You are mentioning symbols as a negative in a lot of your comments, but the language posted here is mostly using words and math operators.
Re:CatalaLang/catala: Programming language for law specifica... by tsimionescu on Monday September 18, 2023 @04:16AM (#37553605)
If a word is used with a precise formal meaning, than it is a symbol more than a word. For example, "for" in C isn't the English word "for", it is a symbol for a precisely defined operation. Someone who speaks native English couldn't understand what `for (;;){}` means.