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Code is not a foreign language, and high schools shouldn't treat it that way

nytimes.com

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Re: Code is not a foreign language, and high schools shouldn't treat it that way

#71

Post by entee »

ozzyman700 wrote: post #61
entee wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who grew up bilingual, I think knowing another language has been invaluable to how I approach and understand the world. I disagree (fully acknowledging my bias) that learning another language is a waste of time. However, I think high school is too late. Most people I knew in HS that started learning another language weren't super invested and didn't learn it. Not to mention that it's really hard to do at 1…

Could you provide examples on how being bilingual has been invaluable to you? I am only fluent in english, I live in a neighborhood where all restaurants answer the phone in spanish but there is usually a worker who speaks english to cover for me. How do you feel being multilingual effects the way you think?

Practically speaking: French is similar enough to latin that most SAT vocab prep was far easier. It also helped when I learned spanish, because again the two are quite similar. Spanish has been useful at several points when I spent some time building things in Latin America, I actually wouldn't have had that opportunity if I didn't speak the language.

Fluffier: Watching french language movies and listening to French language music have given me an appreciation for the culture that I don't think I'd have if I didn't speak the language. I don't think I'd have as much understanding of the western European mindset if I didn't speak a western European language. There are also some things where there's a perfect word for that thing in French and those passing moments bring me joy.

Lots of these things will be also influenced by my having grown up in Belgian culture at home, but again culture and language are so closely entwined. I am a cultural mutt, which has occasionally made me feel not quite entirely of one place or the other, but on balance has been greatly enriching.

Re: Code is not a foreign language, and high schools shouldn't treat it that way

#72

Post by entee »

WhompingWindows wrote: post #59
entee wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who grew up bilingual, I think knowing another language has been invaluable to how I approach and understand the world. I disagree (fully acknowledging my bias) that learning another language is a waste of time. However, I think high school is too late. Most people I knew in HS that started learning another language weren't super invested and didn't learn it. Not to mention that it's really hard to do at 1…

You grew up bilingual, though. For those of us speaking the same languages as our parents/community, we're not going to come even remotely close to fluency with a couple of low-level school courses.

True, though I think a mixed school where a substantial portion of the day is just held in that language (i.e. math is taught in spanish or something) can bridge it somewhat. I think I'm a bit idealistic in this area though.

Also I'd say that young kids usually pick up languages like they're nothing, and they may well communicate amongst themselves in the new language. That said, my brother and I mostly speak english to one another... so maybe not.

Re: Code is not a foreign language, and high schools shouldn't treat it that way

#73

Post by teunispeters »

TomMckenny wrote: post #68

No more than a jelly fish is a fish. Code is a mixture of logic, math, statistics and abstracted electronics diagrams. The typical programing language is a natural language only to the degree those others are. Which is to say it's not. At least in any normal definition of the term.

Yes and no Code also contains the perspectives of the native language the coding system was written from - which for most code languages is English (and all too often USA centric). This may have indirect consequences, eg handling of date/time or spacial measurements or direct in terms of how code itself is organized. (the naming of functions has bias for instance - it directs the reader's attention towards assumptions ...)

I suppose I'd compare natural language fish to... Most (all?) computer programming languages would be remorah following English the shark.

I wonder what a computer language that came out of a completely different world view would look like?

Re: Code is not a foreign language, and high schools shouldn't treat it that way

#74

Post by jtuente »

teunispeters wrote: post #73
TomMckenny wrote: post #68

No more than a jelly fish is a fish. Code is a mixture of logic, math, statistics and abstracted electronics diagrams. The typical programing language is a natural language only to the degree those others are. Which is to say it's not. At least in any normal definition of the term.

Yes and no Code also contains the perspectives of the native language the coding system was written from - which for most code languages is English (and all too often USA centric). This may have indirect consequences, eg handling of date/time or spacial measurements or direct in terms of how code itself is organized. (the naming of functions has bias for instance - it directs the reader's attention towards assumption…

Just check out this Wikipedia page:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-English-based_programming_...

Discussion:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6315913

Re: Code is not a foreign language, and high schools shouldn't treat it that way

#75

Post by jandrese »

influxed wrote: post #13

My experience with written/spoken languages vs programming languages has been vastly different. In my early 20s I picked up enough Spanish working in a restaurant to have conversations about simple topics/small talk, including native speakers at family dinners. Not much effort. In my late 20s using Anki (SRS) I learned enough Russian to mostly understand radio broadcasts and television, but I never practiced speaking…

It shouldn't be a surprise why programming languages are easier to learn. The grammer is highly regular and the vocabulary is absolutely tiny. Even complex computer languages are toys compared to any spoken language. Plus with computer languages you have a machine that can tell you if you're doing it right at your beck and call all day long. No need to bother a real life person to practice.

Re: Code is not a foreign language, and high schools shouldn't treat it that way

#76

Post by bryondowd »

supergarfield wrote: post #9
droithomme wrote: post #2

Computer languages are called languages for a reason. They have syntax, grammar, vocabulary, and are used for communication. People who don't speak english for example but who read python can often read code you wrote and understand it. Math is a similar thing and sometimes called a universal language. These are different sorts of languages from day to day spoken and written languages for general communication, but t…

> People who don't speak english for example but who read python can often read code you wrote and understand it. Math is a similar thing and sometimes called a universal language. I doubt that's true. It would be like reading re-prettified minified Javascript: they wouldn't understand the meaning of the identifiers or comments. That doesn't strictly make it impossible to understand the code, but it's much, much hard…

Can confirm, dealing with code in a foreign language is not easy. A few years ago I had to re-implement from behavior in our application that had been baked into the firmware of our old printers, since the new ones were supposed to be off-the-shelf. We had the source code for the old printers, so no problem, right? Except the company that made them was French, so every comment was in French, and all the identifiers were not just French, but French abbreviations and acronyms mixed together. I could run the comments through Google translate and get a good enough idea, but there was almost nothing I could do about the identifiers, except occasionally get lucky and guess based on cognates. Can't imagine how it would have gone if the language was less similar, like any of the Asian languages.

Thankfully, I didn't really need to refer to the source code often, since I could just work out the finer points of the behaviors I needed to mimic by printing messages that hit all the corner cases.

Re: Code is not a foreign language, and high schools shouldn't treat it that way

#77

Post by ghaff »

mywittyname wrote: post #66
Upvoter33 wrote: post #3

No, not any more than math or statistics are. Replacing a foreign language with a programming course is like replacing a music class with a math course; you may think it's a good idea, but it's not because it's replacing the same type of thing.

But how do we get law makers (or, more importantly, their constituents) to understand this? There's a huge push towards vocational education and parents thinks that "coding" is something their 10 year old can learn then apply to make buckets of money. Plus, you know, it's called a programming "language." If I personally had to chose between a foreign language course, or programming one as a learn-but-never-really-app…

I dunno. It's hard for me to see a year (say) of a foreign language that's never used outside of that class as having a lot of value. As I dimly remember my high school language classes, you didn't even really get into literature and culture associated with the language until later on.

On the other hand, a year of a language like Python probably has some value in teaching logic and problem-solving even if the student never really programs in the future.

Re: Code is not a foreign language, and high schools shouldn't treat it that way

#78

Post by ivanhoe »

IMHO learning to code is quite similar to learning enough of a foreign language to be able to explain to a tourist how to get from point A to point B. Turn left, keep walking until you see the yellow building, then go right, etc. We just instead learn how to give instructions to computers in the language they can understand...

Re: Code is not a foreign language, and high schools shouldn't treat it that way

#79

Post by cfmcdonald »

I can't read the whole article because paywall, but the initial paragraphs seem to miss the point of these laws. The intent is not to indicate that a programming language is an equivalent kind of skill to a foreign language. It's a pragmatic decision about how to fit programming, increasingly an important life skill, into a crowded curriculum. The core requirements (english, math, science, history), aren't going to budge, so it has to be slotted in somewhere if you want anyone other than the super-motivated to take progamming/CS classes.

Maybe the author addresses this pragmatic issue later on?

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