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قلب: a non-ASCII programming language written in Arabic

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

#251

Post by jiofih »

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…

While it’s a good joke, in reality it does not compute.

“Learning a new language” as in programming language, sits in the days-to-months range, while “learning a new language” as in Arabic takes months-to-years, so you’re building a much, much deeper chasm for others to cross and contribute, even though the source code remains English-based.

You can already see this happening with some open source libraries coming from China, where the documentation and all discussion being in ZH already completely blocks foreign contribution.

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

#252

Post by TulliusCicero »

cyborgx7 wrote: post #199
C1sc0cat wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For science and technology yes - not that long ago you had to learn German in some scientific fields as that was where a lot of the useful work was being done.

Imagine the horror of having to learn another language to access valuable intellectual ressources. I just can't relate.

Imagine if every useful domain was dominated by a different language for international discussion, such that one had to learn dozens of languages to be able to even read about them all.

What a glorious paradise that would be!

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

#253

Post by qubex »

mschuetz wrote: post #28
gedy wrote: post #12

I've always wondered why this is not more common. Is there a reason you can't just have localized keywords in each language that map to the same thing? Chinese JavaScript, etc?

Excel seems to be localized and I absolutely hate it. A german version of excel expected me to write WENN instead of IF, or SUMME instead of SUM. It's dumb. Especially since if you're trying to look up code snippets or how to do something in excel, you'll find one in english and then have to find the corresponding german commands.

The Italian version of Excel requires “;” to serate clauses in the localised version of IF, SE(condition;if-true>;otherwise>) and other differences beyond mere translations, and that drives me up the wall and through the roof.

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

#254

Post by fermuch »

DeusExMachina wrote: post #228
danpalmer wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 prog…

I started programming at age 10, with game maker. I cannot stress how useful having icons for each operation is. I remember not knowing what a loop was (I didn't even understand what a variable was), but having the "steps" icon made it clear to me that it was run on every step the player makes (which is approximate, but IIRC it was simply a while loop)

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

#255

Post by qubex »

niceworkbuddy wrote: post #36
gedy wrote: post #12

I've always wondered why this is not more common. Is there a reason you can't just have localized keywords in each language that map to the same thing? Chinese JavaScript, etc?

I think it's cognitive overload. I remember when I was pretty young, there was a language named Logo. It has different but similar syntax in Polish and English. Eventually you used only one of them.

Fun fact: LOGO is actually a LISP.

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

#256

Post by missosoup »

danpalmer wrote: post #165
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…

> On the other hand, ease of being a developer should be something we strive for.

Yeah, no.

I want to strive for a field of professionals who know what they're doing instead of every second 'engineer' being a script kiddie with a MOOC or two of Python under their belt and nothing else. The barriers need to come way up from where they are today, not be lowered even further.

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

#257

Post by mattigames »

TulliusCicero wrote: post #252
cyborgx7 wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine the horror of having to learn another language to access valuable intellectual ressources. I just can't relate.

Imagine if every useful domain was dominated by a different language for international discussion, such that one had to learn dozens of languages to be able to even read about them all. What a glorious paradise that would be!

Yeah, the most culturally diverse society possible would be one where each person talks a completely different language than everyone else, just think about how culturally rich would that be, no other society would compare.

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

#258

Post by konstmonst »

danpalmer wrote: post #165
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…

I think if you are programming in a native language programming language, there is a problem, that you can not find enough help and you don't have things like stackoverflow. You don't immediately see useful patterns and answers to questions and the effectiveness of the language and of your understanding is reduced. Unless you have a personal teacher, I think, learning a native programming language is not a good idea, because you will be limiting yourself, you will learn wrong patterns. You will not be standing on the shoulders of (many)others before you and the quality of your understanding will be not as good. I also think a lot of skill comes from cross language disciplines, and limiting yourself to one native langue is not a good idea. Better to invest time and learn english subset used in programming. Then you can read interesting code of others, which was reviewed by more eyes than your native programming language.

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

#259

Post by skummetmaelk »

pgeorgi wrote: post #120
WalterBright wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Back in the 1980s, I thought it would be great to add German, French, and Japanese error messages to the compiler. I hired native speakers to do the translations. But nobody cared. Programmers program in English. I once traveled to Finland to visit a customer. Everyone in the office spoke in English. I asked if they were just being polite because I was there. They said nope, their staff was from all over Europe and t…

As discussed elsewhere in the thread, the few dozen keywords are a different matter (and are just memorized to mean "make the computer do ..."), but having useful error messages from your compiler helps get stuff sorted out more quickly. There are, to this day, people who get in trouble when their computers reply to them in English, including coding folks. I bet they were (and are) thankful for initiatives like yours…

Localized error messages are detrimental to solving the problem as googling the error message in a different language will prevent you from finding a solution in the main language.

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

#260

Post by protomolecule »

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 should be able to read code written anywhere in the world and understand what it does"

You cannot read tons of code written in the 1C language [0] unless you know Russian, but I don't think it's a loss for you or for Russians because it's a scripting language used by a suit of enterprise software dealing mostly with ever changing Russian accounting standards and tax code [1].

At the same time it's economically effective to use Russian language because it lowers the entry barrier into 1C programming and allows domain experts to understand some of the code.

P.S. Yes, I didn't bother to read the second paragraph :)

[0] https://govnokod.ru/1c

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1C_Company

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