Earlier quoted context omitted.
they are joking.
How can you tell? It looks like a serious post to me.
The whole second paragraph where they talk about everyone writing FORTRAN and no other programming languages existing.
قلب: a non-ASCII programming language written in Arabic
371–380 of 657 posts
Re: قلب: a non-ASCII programming language written in Arabic
#372Earlier quoted context omitted.
TBH, I didn't get the joke until I read your comment. A small "/s" at the end wouldn't hurt.
To be frank, "/s" would have totally ruined it for everyone else. I'm assuming that you simply didn't read past the first paragraph? (That's fine, I bet we all do that way too often here) I mean, I have a hard time believing that you really can't tell that a post that states that everybody uses FORTRAN isn't serious. I care because HN has a way of ruining satire and sarcasm this way. These are only the delightful sty…
> To be frank, "/s" would have totally ruined it for everyone else.
Yes and no. Here on HN I see it everyday: good on-topic jokes get downvoted.
I suspect this happens because when people are in "HN mode" there comes a sort of earnestness into their state that makes it hard to detect other tonalities.
P.S. I needed the FORTRAN bit until it dawned on me…
Re: قلب: a non-ASCII programming language written in Arabic
#373Earlier quoted context omitted.
Good! We need less shitty software, the fewer people that write it the better. I don't get why you have to be a certified engineer to build a bridge, but you can be some bloke with a 2 weekend course in python to program medical computers, avionics, train scheduling systems and other stuff that kills people when it breaks. Non native speaker btw.
Good point. There's just one problem: any moron can still be able to become a programmer if they come from an anglophone country. Therefore, I propose that all companies in English-speaking countries switch to using Linotte[1], which is based on French. I'm also going to submit a patch to GCC that will require the user to solve a differential equation before their code will compile. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/…
On the fact that the atlantic has two sides: https://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/transcriptions/EWD06xx/E...
> 1. good programming is probably beyond the intellectual abilities of today's "average programmer"
2. to do, hic et nunc, the job well with today's army of practitioners, many of whom have been lured into a profession beyond their intellectual abilities, is an insoluble problem
3. our only hope is that, by revealing the intellectual contents of programming, we will make the subject attracting the type of students it deserves, so that a next generation of better qualified programmers may gradually replace the current one.
Re: قلب: a non-ASCII programming language written in Arabic
#374If there is one thing this will achieve then it should be this: it should help to show those born in the world of English what a privileged position they have. For every other person in the world not born into English that is the first hurdle they have to cross in order to get to the next one: programming itself. Anybody that is born in an English speaking region has a huge head start in this respect. Note that it go…
FWIW, most non-English countries teach children English in their version of middle school. And most English speakers aren’t like the stereotypical French; English speakers are quite tolerant of both sentence structure mistakes and extreme dialects.
They’re not really at that great of a disadvantage.
Re: قلب: a non-ASCII programming language written in Arabic
#375Earlier quoted context omitted.
To be frank, "/s" would have totally ruined it for everyone else. I'm assuming that you simply didn't read past the first paragraph? (That's fine, I bet we all do that way too often here) I mean, I have a hard time believing that you really can't tell that a post that states that everybody uses FORTRAN isn't serious. I care because HN has a way of ruining satire and sarcasm this way. These are only the delightful sty…
No, not really, I read the whole post. And the FORTRAN reference was weird, but there are weirder things people post (and believe), and when writing, people do make mistakes. Thinking back, it should have been the clue, but it wasn't. And judging by the other answers, I am not the only one who was fooled by the tone. That said, if you feel like `/s` is ruining the sarcasm for you, the solution is pretty simple. Greas…
> No, not really, I read the whole post. And the FORTRAN reference was weird, but there are weirder things people post (and believe)
True. I'm sometimes a source for similarly controversial statements. However, the following line should suffice to indicate the facetiousness of the post:
> This is the same reason that everyone uses FORTRAN.
Everyone does not use FORTRAN, and in fact it is so uncommonly used that it is ridiculous anyone would think otherwise. There are probably quite a lot of people in this industry who've never even heard of FORTRAN.
This is a common form of sarcasm in English, to counter an argument (programming languages should be English-only because there'd be too much fragmentation otherwise) by presenting the same argument in the context of something obviously untrue (that's why everyone uses FORTRAN).
Re: قلب: a non-ASCII programming language written in Arabic
#376> 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…
You don't really have to learn the language to program in it though you can just know "import" means include this library, that's a harder task than just being able to read for sure. I think the biggest issue is when you have to use a different script than your native language (and keyboard). To code in Arabic, Chinese, or Russian I'd have to completely relearn how to type.
Re: قلب: a non-ASCII programming language written in Arabic
#377This 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 is valid python3, try it out. 數字 = 23 運行 = True 假 = False 整數=int 輸入=input 印出=print while 運行: 猜測 = 整數(輸入('輸入一個數字: ')) if 猜測 == 數字: 印出('恭喜, 你猜對了.') 運行 = 假 # 這會讓循環語句結束 elif 猜測 See: http://reganmian.net/blog/2008/11/21/chinese-python-translat...
Uses English grammar, though.
Re: قلب: a non-ASCII programming language written in Arabic
#378If your Arabic-only programming language has an English web page (actually a blog post) it means it's an art project, not a bona fide tool for programmers who want to use Arabic input and/or who prefer Arabic names and keywords.
The way I see it, if its creator made software with it, then it's a bona fide tool for programming. The fact it hasn't yet spread to more developers than those involved in the project doesn't negate its "fide"s or "tool"-ness. If you made a parser for a scripting language for content for your application, or a DSL for your colleagues to use, would you claim they weren't "bona fide"?
It's a somewhat better art project than Brainf*ck or Piet because linguistic barriers are more culturally significant than "just because I can" exhibitionism, but it has the same practical usefulness. Arbitrary obstacles make sense in conceptual art, not in tools.
Re: قلب: a non-ASCII programming language written in Arabic
#379Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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…
> How many English constructs do you have in a programming language? Func, var, for, if, else, import, etc. Func and var aren't even English words. Even an English speaker would have to at least get confirmation that their guess is right. You could replace them with arbitrary symbols and it wouldn't rally really change anything.
See APL, equally horrendous for everyone: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/APL_(programming_language)
Re: قلب: a non-ASCII programming language written in Arabic
#380I like the idea of this project. Its main goal is to highlight the bias towards English in programming languages and computer science and I think that's a great goal. I also think another great use would be to provide a stepping stone to those who are native Arabic speakers to get into programming. There will still be the English barrier to move on to other languages (and likely more professional or "serious" work) but if you can convince people that programming is interesting in the first place, this could encourage them to keep going further. As it stands now, if you don't speak English you would need to a certain amount of English AND programming languages. Languages like this means you just get to learn programming first while we figure out how to remove English as a barrier to entry.