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Re: Most used words in current buffer


From: tomas
Subject: Re: Most used words in current buffer
Date: Thu, 19 Jul 2018 09:25:16 +0200
User-agent: Mutt/1.5.21 (2010-09-15)

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On Thu, Jul 19, 2018 at 01:04:38AM -0600, Bob Proulx wrote:

[...]

> For such things I generally prefer balanced tree structures because
> work is amortized instead of lumped.  But the important point here is
> that for every algorithm + data structure there is a trade-off of some
> sort between one thing and another thing.

It all depends, of course...

> It was in the Perl community that these became known as "hashes" due
> to the implementation.  But I think it is better to keep the ADT
> (abstract data type) abstract.

Ain't (human) language beautiful? Like "crane" (the lifting device),
which is a metaphor by analogy to the bird (and which is preserved
across other West European languages with quite different names for
both!). Or like those brand-things (Scotch/Sello/Tesa for adhesive
tape, for example), which would be the same pattern you decry above
(implementation detail as a substitute for the principle, or pars
pro toto).

No wonder that Perl is a linguist's child :-)

You are right: it *is* important to distinguish those layers, as a
mathematician/technician. But then you are wrong [1] too: we are
humans and our languages are exquisitely messy.

Cheers

[1] Sorry for the extremely shortened form: it is meant as an
   expression of subjective feeling. I don't think I am in the
   real position to decide whether you are right or wrong. That
   would be presumptuous indeed.

- -- tomás
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