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Show HN: Bato – A Filipino Programming Language

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Re: Show HN: Bato – A Filipino Programming Language

#51

Post by philbarr »

rb808 wrote: post #13

One thing I'm completely ignorant of is how to people from countries where non-latin alphabets are write code? Eg if you're Chinese, Arabic even Russian do you have to do everything in English and English characters? I'd hope there is a Unicode mapping into other characters - is there any language that supports this? Even for libraries would be nice.

I'm the only English person working in a German team at the moment, and their codebase takes letters like "ö" and makes it "oe". I think there are a few like that.

Personally I prefer it when they use English obviously (I don't speak German), but it also means you don't get ridiculously long identifiers.

Re: Show HN: Bato – A Filipino Programming Language

#52

Post by tjalfi »

dguo wrote: post #25

A few months ago, I was daydreaming about creating a new programming language and started thinking about language internationalization. I found this page, with some interesting comments: https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/alfredth/2011/07/21/why-are... As an aside, this one stuck out to me: "One of the difficulties in allowing the keyword to be switched on the fly to a different language is that keywords have to be 're…

An advantage of reserved keywords is that users cannot write code like this PL/I snippet.

IF IF = THEN; THEN ELSE = IF; ELSE ELSE = THEN;

Re: Show HN: Bato – A Filipino Programming Language

#54

Post by patio11 »

rb808 wrote: post #13

One thing I'm completely ignorant of is how to people from countries where non-latin alphabets are write code? Eg if you're Chinese, Arabic even Russian do you have to do everything in English and English characters? I'd hope there is a Unicode mapping into other characters - is there any language that supports this? Even for libraries would be nice.

In Japanese companies that I've worked at, the convention is using English words for programming concepts, using Japanese words transliterated into English for business concepts except where the English word is easy and obvious, and using a pedantic level of Japanese code comments to signpost for those developers who are less confident in their English ability.

e.g.

// 教科リストを取得する。

String[] kyoukaList = getKyoukaList();

(Japanese university backend systems have two concepts of "a subject", with kyouka being a subject like math is a subject and kamoku being a subject like Algebra II is a subject.)

Re: Show HN: Bato – A Filipino Programming Language

#55

Post by wingerlang »

astonex wrote: post #37
rb808 wrote: post #13

One thing I'm completely ignorant of is how to people from countries where non-latin alphabets are write code? Eg if you're Chinese, Arabic even Russian do you have to do everything in English and English characters? I'd hope there is a Unicode mapping into other characters - is there any language that supports this? Even for libraries would be nice.

At my Korean company, all code is written in English and comments are in Korean/English. On osx, capslock is used to quickly switch between languages.

Capslock with custom bindings?

The default way to switch is control + space.

Re: Show HN: Bato – A Filipino Programming Language

#56

Post by drdaeman »

blackguardx wrote: post #36
dx034 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe using single characters (e.g. chinese characters) instead of words for keywords is more efficient to type and read for programmers. Not sure how typing compares but it could give code more structure. Does anyone know how governments in China, Japan or Korea handle this? Do they try to use non-english programming languages?

Single chinese characters are inputted with more than one key press on the keyboard, so it won't be much different. You can test this by changing your input method to Japanese or Chinese. At least in Japanese, the sound of the character is typed out using english letters (romanji) and various options are presented for autocompletion. You are right that reading characters is probably faster, though.

> At least in Japanese, the sound of the character is typed out using english letters

Technically speaking, Japanese have kana-based keyboard layout, where a single mora is a single keypress rather than two. However, there is still an extra (second) keystroke for dakuten/handakuten (か -> が), which is not required with romaji input (where it's just "ka" vs "ga"), so it's not a 100% speed increase. So, typing is somewhat more efficient than with romaji, but I think I've heard no one uses that, except for, possibly, professional typists.

Re: Show HN: Bato – A Filipino Programming Language

#57

Post by laverick »

andreasklinger wrote: post #26

Awesome stuff - i think this kind of languages are more important than most people (esp with strong english school background assume). I could see this as educational language for kids. Related to this: In the 80/90s i saw a German BASIC variant floating around. Unfortunately i couldnt find it online But… if you are into alternative-language programming languages i highly recommend you reading up on Plankalkül[1] - w…

Well, starting around grade 3 kids in the Philippines are taught primarily in English, so that's probably not the biggest hurdle there.

Thanks for the German link, made my morning :)

Re: Show HN: Bato – A Filipino Programming Language

#58

Post by level3 »

drdaeman wrote: post #56
blackguardx wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Single chinese characters are inputted with more than one key press on the keyboard, so it won't be much different. You can test this by changing your input method to Japanese or Chinese. At least in Japanese, the sound of the character is typed out using english letters (romanji) and various options are presented for autocompletion. You are right that reading characters is probably faster, though.

> At least in Japanese, the sound of the character is typed out using english letters Technically speaking, Japanese have kana-based keyboard layout, where a single mora is a single keypress rather than two. However, there is still an extra (second) keystroke for dakuten/handakuten (か -> が), which is not required with romaji input (where it's just "ka" vs "ga"), so it's not a 100% speed increase. So, typing is somewh…

Just as an anecdote, I know of at least one person in my company who uses it, without being anywhere near a professional typist. I suspect older generations may be much more likely to use it.

In any case, even though mostly everyone prefers the IME on their computers, I haven’t seen any Japanese people who prefer romaji input on their smartphones.

Re: Show HN: Bato – A Filipino Programming Language

#59

Post by [deleted] »

dx034 wrote: post #27
rb808 wrote: post #13

One thing I'm completely ignorant of is how to people from countries where non-latin alphabets are write code? Eg if you're Chinese, Arabic even Russian do you have to do everything in English and English characters? I'd hope there is a Unicode mapping into other characters - is there any language that supports this? Even for libraries would be nice.

Maybe using single characters (e.g. chinese characters) instead of words for keywords is more efficient to type and read for programmers. Not sure how typing compares but it could give code more structure. Does anyone know how governments in China, Japan or Korea handle this? Do they try to use non-english programming languages?

[deleted]

Re: Show HN: Bato – A Filipino Programming Language

#60

Post by yeukhon »

rb808 wrote: post #13

One thing I'm completely ignorant of is how to people from countries where non-latin alphabets are write code? Eg if you're Chinese, Arabic even Russian do you have to do everything in English and English characters? I'd hope there is a Unicode mapping into other characters - is there any language that supports this? Even for libraries would be nice.

As far as in my experience, no. Comments can be Chinese for ease of reading, but Chinese developers work with the usual programming languages out there: C, C++, c#, .NET, Java/Scala, Python, Javascript. Honestly there is no reason to use a Chinese programming language (there are such). If you work for an international companies, then English is the preferred language for comments.

Back in 2000s, text editors often did not default to UTF-8, so if you are from Taiwan for example, your file might be in big5 encoding, and would require a change if open by an editor in utf-8. Now this is a rare practice.

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