Propose to use clang-format to enforce hotspot codestyle

[John Rose]

On Mar 13, 2020, at 2:52 AM, Andrew Haley <aph at redhat.com> wrote:
> 
> I have been programming for a long while and I'm interested in
> linguistics, but I have never seen the connection between programming
> style enforcement and prescriptivist linguistics explained like this
> before. Thank you! That was a very useful addition to my mental
> furniture.

My hat is off to John McWhorter; his books and lectures (on teach12)
are the source of 90% of what I know about linguistics.  He describes
linguistic change as what a geek might call ergodic or thermodynamic
traversal of state space.  He doesn’t use physics terms for this, but
appeals to the way his cat inhabits every surface and cranny of its
environment.  “If it can go somewhere, it eventually will.”  The
exploration is on a time scale that varies according to the number
of people who share the convention, with small unconnected
tribes and villages moving the fastest, and literate megabucks
moving the slowest.  I think a lot of conventional behaviors are
like this.

> I'm reminded of David Crystal's (?) fantasy about linguists studying
> whale song in which one, on finding a whale who sings differently from
> the others, says with excitement "that whale made a mistake!"  :-)

Excellent!  And maybe the whales are just waiting for the experts
to leave, so they can just kick back and sing natural.

— John