Linguistic Relativity and Programming Languages
arXiv:1808.03916
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.
10 pages, repo at https://github.com/jiahao/statistical-computing-linguistics, Published in Proceedings of the 2016 Joint Statistical Meetings, Chicago, IL, USA