Linguistic Relativity and Programming Languages

August 12, 2018 · Entered Twilight · 🏛 arXiv.org

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Authors Jiahao Chen arXiv ID 1808.03916 Category cs.PL: Programming Languages Cross-listed cs.MS, stat.CO Citations 4 Venue arXiv.org Repository https://github.com/jiahao/statistical-computing-linguistics ⭐ 1 Last Checked 1 month ago

Abstract

The use of programming languages can wax and wane across the decades. We examine the split-apply- combine pattern that is common in statistical computing, and consider how its invocation or implementation in languages like MATLAB and APL differ from R/dplyr. The differences in spelling illustrate how the concept of linguistic relativity applies to programming languages in ways that are analogous to human languages. Finally, we discuss how Julia, by being a high performance yet general purpose dynamic language, allows its users to express different abstractions to suit individual preferences.