Slashdot Mirror
Kishotenketsu Programming?
mike_stay asks: "Imperative Programming follows closely the 'outline' style of writing most of us were taught in elementary school. Japanese, however, have a very hard time with that writing style, as they've been trained in the concept of kishotenketsu: stories are usually told by bouncing around between various points of view, which necessarily give different accounts; no attempt is made to say what 'really' happened. 'Good writing style' expects readers to draw the conclusions; writing that is too explicit is not valued. The writing, therefore, tends to be inductive: specific examples precede general principles. The closest thing I can think of to kishotenketsu in programming is functional programming or declarative languages, but then, I'm American. Would other readers point me at other languages with this type of 'eastern' feel?"
Kishotenketsu is a result of the Japanese aversion to direct confrontation, and consiousness of status.
exactly! what you'd end up with is an api that has 100 different functions all of which can only individually hint at the general direction of the output without making any kind of assertion about what is actually the correct output given your parameters. and care would be taken so that one function stands out as an obvious alternative to the others, except for maybe the more "senior" functions that have been built into the library from some time back. but, that's ok, because those functions, while the most obvious to use, would be the least useful in terms of the quality and clarity of values returned.
this gets no play in my ride.