| ▲ | azangru 17 hours ago |
| > But Rust is better in the same way that Betamax was better than VHS, Mastodon is better than Twitter, Dvorak keyboards are better than QWERTY, Esperanto is better than English and Lua is better than Javascript Esperanto is certainly not better than English; and I really doubt Lua is better than Javascript. |
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| ▲ | david-gpu 17 hours ago | parent | next [-] |
| > Esperanto is certainly not better than English; and I really doubt Lua is better than Javascript Doesn't that depend on how one decides to "score" a language? And I think that's what the author is getting at, too. |
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| ▲ | flysand7 17 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | I caught a different meaning from this entire sentence. I think the author was alluding to the fact that even if you replace a technology with something "better", at the end it doesn't matter, because Most People will keep using Twitter, Most People will keep using QWERTY layout, count all of your acquaintances, I doubt any of them speak Esperanto. Well at least the idea comes through, but I don't think it makes sense to argue whether Lua is actually better than JavaScript or not. | | |
| ▲ | david-gpu 17 hours ago | parent [-] | | Indeed. If one primarily values certain technical aspects, Beta was "better" than VHS. But if one primarily values popularity, profitability or practicality, then VHS was "better". And so on with the other examples. So when we go back to this: > Esperanto is certainly not better than English; and I really doubt Lua is better than Javascript All I get from it is "I personally have a strong opinion about what makes a language 'better'". Nothing wrong with that, but it's independent from the argument made by TFA. Perhaps I misinterpreted. |
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| ▲ | coldtea 17 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | >Doesn't that depend on how one decides to "score" a language? Not as much, because not all ways of scoring a language are as good either, and in the ways of scoring that matter, English is better than Esperanto. | | |
| ▲ | fragmede 16 hours ago | parent [-] | | In terms of not being a bag of special cases, and thus easy to use, Esperanto is better than English. Like, if you were to design a language from first principles, you'd come up with Esperanto. The only problem is the massive inertia English has, which makes it "better". In terms of design, it's absolute trash. But it's what humanity's got. Trying to learn English as a second or third or fifth language is just so difficult. | | |
| ▲ | mf_tomb 15 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Those special cases are useful or the natural result of speakers coming from other languages. If esperanto were used widely for many years, it would also develop special cases over time. In 200 years, it would be as irregular as english, as it borrowed words and phrases from other languages. | |
| ▲ | coldtea 15 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | >Like, if you were to design a language from first principles, you'd come up with Esperanto That's the problem. It's design by commitee instead of evolutionary organic design. It's how cyborgs think people oughta talk. |
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| ▲ | prmph 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| For me, one major weakness of English is having adjectives appearing before nouns. The more time passes, the more I hate that aspect of English. It messes up all sorts of things. Most other languages don't have this problem. Consider that in programming, technical docs, even normal writing, it is almost always better to the most important aspect of a name come first. The adjective-noun order in English makes this awkward all the time. |
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| ▲ | kstrauser 2 minutes ago | parent | next [-] | | I love its contribution to wordplay. You can write things like “yesterday we sat down to a meal of golden, moist, roast whisky” because the adjectives lead up to a set of expectations about the subject that turn out to be untrue. | |
| ▲ | rightbyte 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | You can go for 'Achilles the swift' order if you want though. |
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| ▲ | jszymborski 17 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| I think maybe they meant it is a better lingua franca than English, which I'm a little more likely to agree with (Esperanto is by no means perfect for this) |
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| ▲ | yyuugg 17 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Having worked with Lua and JS professionally for years, Lua is far, far worse than JS. |
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| ▲ | joshdavham 16 hours ago | parent | prev [-] |
| > Esperanto is certainly not better than English Agreed. Until Esperanto starts having actual native-speaking communities, I will look at it the same way I look at Klingon or Elvish. |
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| ▲ | dogmatism 16 hours ago | parent [-] | | Well, there are denaskuloj, but aside from that, I don't think languages are adopted into communities to replace other languages based on their merits, but based on socio-religious factors that have nothing to do with the language itself |
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