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Humanist Archives: May 21, 2020, 9 a.m. Humanist 34.40 - now we can search

                  Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 34, No. 40.
            Department of Digital Humanities, King's College London
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        Date: 2020-05-20 14:45:44+00:00
        From: Daniel Johnson 
        Subject: Re: [Humanist] 34.34: now we can search

Dear Willard,

Thank you to you and the whole crew for support of the search
functionality. While playing around with it, I discovered  by accident a
post by "Randall Smith" from 1988 that seems a direct response to the
recent "the 'secret' of a programming language?" discussion. To wit:

> "I believe that there is no "best" language; the "best" language varies
> task to task, even person to person [...] I have no doubt that dBase could
> be used to write a word processor, or even a text parser.  I can also play
> bass guitar on my regular guitar by tuning the strings down, but this is
> not an elegant solution.  The difference between programming in C and dBase
> is elegance.  Certainly other languages will be more elegant than C for
> specific tasks, but I appreciate C's flexibility and general
> applicability.  I also find that different word processors are better for
> different types of writing.  However, as a PhD student in Classics, I do
> not have the time to learn a multitude of word processors or a multitude of
> languages, as much as I would like to.  Therefore, I have to pick a
> language, and a word processor, which can perform all my tasks.  Once I
> have chosen, I find it easier to find a way to solve a new problem in the
> old language than to start a new one from scratch."

(source: https://dhhumanist.org/Archives/Virginia/v01/8803.1324.txt)

There could be more of interest there; it just struck me out of the blue. Plus
ça change, and all that.

Best,
Dan

--
Daniel Johnson, Ph.D.
English and Digital Humanities Librarian
Navari Family Center for Digital Scholarship, Hesburgh Libraries

University of Notre Dame
250C Hesburgh Library
Notre Dame, IN 46556
o: 574-631-3457
e: djohns27@nd.edu



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