Yeah, you seem to be just trolling at this point if you pretend to not understand the huge irony in saying homogeneity is bad in plain English in order from someone from Colombia to understand what your are saying.
Why do they keep making me post the Bors comic? https://i.imgur.com/SPyfuNz.png
I don't see the connection with this comic, are you suggesting the person walking is you therefore should complain in the universal language to make society stop using such universal language so we can no longer understand you next time you complain?
> 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…
What do you mean exactly by "programming in a foreign language is a pretty significant barrier", and why is reducing this barrier to strive for? I believe English as a common language is a good thing for communication, for understanding each other. It could have been any other languages I suppose, but today it is English. It may change. I cannot even talk about programming in my first language because I would not have gotten any use out of it. It would not have been beneficial to me to learn the terminology in my first language. English, however, was pretty much beneficial. I am not sure that division here would be beneficial to the field, but this is just my opinion. Yes, it is a barrier for people who, for some reasons, are not willing to learn the common language which, today, is English. Is it a bad thing? In my opinion, it is not. It could be a way of expressing your dedication and willingness in some cases. I wanted to understand, and I wanted to be understood, and knew that learning English was the way to do it, so I learnt it. Having many different languages would defeat the purpose of what having a common language gives us, which binds us together.
Maybe one shouldn't take the "unfairness" aspect too far. This project seems to be more about recognizing cultural differences in thought patterns and how they permeate today's computing world. It doesn't seem to be geared towards teaching programming to students who only know Arabic so far. And English is being taught and used extensively in the Indian education system and society in general.
That (cultural differences in thought patterns) is indeed an interesting take (I'd like to hear what Larry Wall has to say about it). I do think it would be best addressed at the background level (say predicate logic or somesuch) than at a programming language level (which is more of a consequence). Unfortunately, the "unfairness" thing has hijacked many subthreads and it takes the proposal at face value (as in "Woul…
I'd say predicate logic and much of the theory behind computer programming would stay the same, regardless of the language.
And yes, I think it would be good for speakers of non-latin based languages to be able to write programs (or notebooks) in their own language. Some stuff, like business logic, NLP, or "Low Code" like in Excel, could benefit from staying in one cultural frame of mind instead of switching between multiple frames.
Especially for different writing directions, like with Arabic. At the very least, Mandarin in Mainland China is now written almost exclusively left to right, so it's not as painful to use latin letters in a Chinese text when appropriate.
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…
This comment is a good way to see all the HN users who go off of a comment without reading it fully.
I honestly don't understand how people can reply without even reading what they're replying to. And when they do, why aren't they downvoted to oblivion?
Damn can you imagine versioning issues? Popular plugin creator decides english is too imperial for his tastes, switches to swahili(his native tongue :) )
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…
"Fortran is not, of course, outdated, and it’s not at all complex. In fact, it has grown into these myths exactly because it is that good at what it does."
Just wanted to share some positive FORTRAN vibes...
> 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…
> Programming in a foreign language is a pretty significant barrier.
Not really. I learned programming when I was 14, far before learning English.
How many English constructs do you have in a programming language? Func, var, for, if, else, import, etc. You can memorize those in no time, especially if you do that as you learn programming.
Documentation and textbooks are a different thing, of course. But I learned programming in high school, from teachers speaking my language and with textbook in my language.
Visual Basic for Applications has localized Versions. Here is an Example in german, so why not in arabic?
Funktion VorherigerGeschaeftstag(dt Als Datum) Als Datum
Dim wd as integer
wd = Wochentag(dt) ' Wochentag liefert 1 für Sonntag, 2 für Montag usw.
Prüfe Fall wd
Fall 1
' Auf Sonntag wird Datum vom letzten Freitag zurückgegeben
VorherigerGeschaeftstag = dt - 2
Fall 2
' Auf Montag wird Datum vom letzten Freitag zurückgegeben
VorherigerGeschaeftstag = dt - 3
Fall Sonst
' Andere Tage: vorheriges Datum wird zurückgegeben
VorherigerGeschaeftstag = dt - 1
Ende Prüfe
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.
There were French and German versions of LOGO, for example.
No idea if this counts as "serious", but it was used in schools back then.