قلب: a non-ASCII programming language written in Arabic • Hacker News Board

Re: قلب: a non-ASCII programming language written in Arabic

#161

Post by jamil7 » Fri, Oct 25, 2019, 10:36 AM UTC

probably_wrong wrote: post #31

Animats wrote: post #3

Oh, it's just an art project. We haven't yet seen a serious non-English programming language. One would have expected one in Chinese or Japanese by now. There was COBOL in French, once, with French words and word order, but it never caught on, even in Francophone countries.

> it never caught on, even in Francophone countries I started programming at least 4 years before I started learning English. In my experience, not knowing what "if" means doesn't change anything because I never thought of code as prose. Whether it's called "if", "si", or "wenn", all that changes in my head is "what's the magic word that I have to insert before I can branch my code?". This, I believe, it's why locali…

Very good point. While non-english programming languages haven't caught on I have experienced German documentation, comments and variable names in a codebase.

Re: قلب: a non-ASCII programming language written in Arabic

#162

Post by skavi » Fri, Oct 25, 2019, 10:37 AM UTC

seer wrote: post #140

pgcj_poster wrote: post #135

This is at best useless, and at worst harmful. If we start using languages other than English for code, then we'll end up balkanizing the software world. People in humanities departments can talk about things like "Chinese Poetry" and "Continental Philosophy," but in STEM, we should be above that nonsense. I should be able to read code written anywhere in the world and understand what it does. This is the same reason…

I have a feeling a lot of art projects in history have been described as “at best useless, and at worst harmful“. For example leonardo da vinci’s bicycle. Even if that is true, here or in the other art projects, the purpose is to evoke some aort of response, to capture attention and to provoke discussion. And by this measure and judging firom the comments here this has been a resounding success :)

> This is the same reason that everyone uses FORTRAN.

The person you are responding to is not being serious. it is a joke.

Re: قلب: a non-ASCII programming language written in Arabic

#163

Post by bhaak » Fri, Oct 25, 2019, 10:37 AM UTC

dukoid wrote: post #126

Fordec wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Originally it was a Anglicization of "für" in German first used in a programming language called Superplan which was then picked up upon by FORTRAN and then it just stuck

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heinz_Rutishauser I don't think it's much more intuitive in German than in English, probably goes back to the "for each" quantor.

The for loop is the most unintuitive variant of the possible looping constructs. The others (while do/do while/endless loop) are much more straightforward. We could easily have ended up with another version.

I always read it as inspired by "for values of" which at least in German is a common phrase heard in mathematical courses.

Re: قلب: a non-ASCII programming language written in Arabic

#164

Post by whym » Fri, Oct 25, 2019, 10:38 AM UTC

Animats wrote: post #3

Oh, it's just an art project. We haven't yet seen a serious non-English programming language. One would have expected one in Chinese or Japanese by now. There was COBOL in French, once, with French words and word order, but it never caught on, even in Francophone countries.

For Japanese, I hear about Nadeshiko (なでしこ) a lot. It has a thriving user base, apparently. [1]

[1] https://nadesi.com/top/

Re: قلب: a non-ASCII programming language written in Arabic

#165

Post by danpalmer » Fri, Oct 25, 2019, 10:39 AM UTC

coldtea wrote: post #152

> Code is written entirely in Arabic, highlighting cultural biases of computer science and challenging the assumptions we make about programming. There are lots of "cultural biases in computer science" -- in UI, neural network training, encodings, terms of service, etc. Of all of them, this is the least helpful, and the least important. It's like doing math in local notation, or translating latin/greek terms doctors…

> There's a reason why e.g. air traffic control speaks english no matter the ethnicity (as per the ICAO standard).

Yes. The reason is that air traffic control inherently requires people from different regions and languages to communicate quickly in life or death situations. Ease of being an air-traffic controller is not a primary motivating factor, and getting more diverse input isn't really a useful feature.

On the other hand, ease of being a developer should be something we strive for. We don't generally deal with fast paced life or death communication, we instead want programming to be accessible, to get a range of people (and their input, experience, opinions) involved, and to break down unnecessary barriers. Programming in a foreign language is a pretty significant barrier.

Re: قلب: a non-ASCII programming language written in Arabic

#166

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Oct 25, 2019, 10:39 AM UTC

pgcj_poster wrote: post #135

This is at best useless, and at worst harmful. If we start using languages other than English for code, then we'll end up balkanizing the software world. People in humanities departments can talk about things like "Chinese Poetry" and "Continental Philosophy," but in STEM, we should be above that nonsense. I should be able to read code written anywhere in the world and understand what it does. This is the same reason…

[deleted]

Re: قلب: a non-ASCII programming language written in Arabic

#167

Post by cyborgx7 » Fri, Oct 25, 2019, 10:40 AM UTC

pgcj_poster wrote: post #135

This is at best useless, and at worst harmful. If we start using languages other than English for code, then we'll end up balkanizing the software world. People in humanities departments can talk about things like "Chinese Poetry" and "Continental Philosophy," but in STEM, we should be above that nonsense. I should be able to read code written anywhere in the world and understand what it does. This is the same reason…

So glad this turned out to be a joke in the second paragraf. The first is very believable. I've definitely encountered people who would write something like it unironically.

Re: قلب: a non-ASCII programming language written in Arabic

#168

Post by gimboland » Fri, Oct 25, 2019, 10:40 AM UTC

ComodoHacker wrote: post #156

pgcj_poster wrote: post #135

This is at best useless, and at worst harmful. If we start using languages other than English for code, then we'll end up balkanizing the software world. People in humanities departments can talk about things like "Chinese Poetry" and "Continental Philosophy," but in STEM, we should be above that nonsense. I should be able to read code written anywhere in the world and understand what it does. This is the same reason…

There ARE successful (used in production) languages with non-English syntax. You're just saying "Everyone should use Chrome, otherwise the web would be balkanized". Or, taking it to the extreme, "every book in the world should be written in English". >I should be able to read code written anywhere in the world and understand what it does You are, but no one promised "without any effort". Almost every developer of not…

r/whoosh

Re: قلب: a non-ASCII programming language written in Arabic

#169

Post by 317070 » Fri, Oct 25, 2019, 10:41 AM UTC

Scarblac wrote: post #96

babuskov wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. I started to program in BASIC some 7 years before I started to learn English. I had no idea what PRINT or LET meant and was able to program without any problems. Hm, even today, I have not idea why "for" is used for loops (?) and I'm using it without any problems.

When I was 10, the Dutch language manual for the Commodore 64 explained the pronunciation of "input#", but not that of just "input". So I (unfamiliar with foreign languages) thought that "input" was pronounced as we would in Dutch, while "input#" sounded like what I now know is English. A class mate said his father said they were both pronounced as in English. We had a fight over this in the playground, and I beat hi…

My brain is parsing how a Dutch input would sound different in Dutch? "in de put" vs "input" sounds the same, no? What is different?

Re: قلب: a non-ASCII programming language written in Arabic

#170

Post by johnisgood » Fri, Oct 25, 2019, 10:41 AM UTC

coldtea wrote: post #155

johnisgood wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think Lojban is the only language that could work (not just for computers but humans as well). I do not see it happening anytime soon though. For anyone who does not know what Lojban is: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lojban#Applications would be a great starting point. :)

> I think Lojban is the only language that could work (not just for computers but humans as well) What about humans who like to think in a language whose idioms, history, etc match their culture? Heck, human languages even adapt to the climate (e.g. warmer areas having more vowel sounds, cold areas optimizing for shorter/less open mouth exposed to cold air, etc). Plus there is some naivety in the idea that humans nee…

Does https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Lojban/Culturally_neutral or https://wiki.c2.com/?CulturallyNeutralLanguage answer your question?

From the second link:

> The only thing that characterizes a logical language, like LojbanLanguage, is that it's unambiguous from a structural standpoint. It seems that Lojban is just as expressive as any other human language, with the same capacity for overstatement, understatement, irony, metaphor, simile, pun, etc. A lot of famous works of fiction have been translated into Lojban by enthusiasts.

Your concerns have been brought up and explained in part by the two links above, and in the Wikipedia article I linked to. Allow me to quote some parts from it:

> The removal of grammatical ambiguity from modification [...] seems to heighten creative exploration of word combination. [...] Other areas of possible benefit are (surprisingly in a 'logical' language) emotional expression. Lojban has a fully developed set of metalinguistic and emotional attitude indicators that supplant much of the baggage of aspect and mood found in natural languages, but most clearly separate indicative statements from the emotional communication associated with those statements. This might lead to freer expression and consideration of ideas, since stating an idea can be distinguished from supporting that idea. The set of possible indicators is also large enough to provide specificity and clarity of emotions that is difficult in natural languages.

> The language was built to attempt to remove some limits on human thought; these limits are not understood, so that the tendency is to try to remove restrictions whenever we find the language structure gets in our way. You definitely can talk nonsense in Lojban.

Anyway, you can decide to be ambiguous if you wish to do so, it is perfectly possible. Do not worry, it will not turn our society into something similar to the movie Equilibrium. I think the word "logic" makes people jump to similar conclusions.