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

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

#431

Post by namelosw » Fri, Oct 25, 2019, 2:46 PM UTC

I'm so surprised so many people think localized programming languages are useless.

Let's not forget there are still a lot of people don't speak English. I live in China, and I have seen a lot of kids with great talent in mathematical thinking -- needless to say, they have a great chance to have great computational thinking if they have proper environment. However, there are a lot of kids either having no multilinguistic talent or living in average developed zones that they can't access good English education[0], can miss the opportunity of being great programmers. As a comparison, mathematics symbols are decoupled with specific languages (like APL[1]), and the textbooks are well translated. English should not be a hard dependency to programming.

A lot of people believe in the future everyone should code more or less. I suppose if that's true, there must be nice localized programming languages to achieve that goal, which helps people scripting their day to day life, instead of just being pure GUI users. Or programming languages would still be only designed for minorities as least for non-English-speaking countries.

[0] For Chinese people, English could be not extremely hard (as English people learn Chinese) but still very hard to learn, it takes years of systematic training, just because the two languages are way too different.

[1] PS: I have some trouble for a very long time to understand what does Alan Perlis was referring to in his famous quote: "Though the Chinese should adore APL, it's FORTRAN they put their money on.", I guess it might refer to the symbols decoupled to natural languages.

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

#432

Post by knodi123 » Fri, Oct 25, 2019, 2:47 PM UTC

big_chungus wrote: post #351

pgcj_poster wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it's completely impossible to work on something that uses a foreign language, then it must be pretty important for people to be able to program with the language they already know.

There is an obvious difference; English is still the lingua franca. If you're dealing with anything international, you use it because everyone has a decent shot of knowing it; assuming most oss isn't confined to a single nation, english is still the best choice. Plus, for this reason, other nations are usually much better than America about teaching a foreign language.

> English is still the lingua franca

Ironic that in order to say this, you used a latin phrase that translates to "language of the Frankish people".

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

#433

Post by TallGuyShort » Fri, Oct 25, 2019, 2:51 PM UTC

jacquesm wrote: post #409

falcolas wrote: post #374

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yes, they are. There is a huge difference between having a language as you mother tongue versus having it as a secondary one. My English is reasonably good, I started young (at age 10) and yet, by the time I was 14 or so the programming books I had access to were way over my head. If English had been my first language I would have had a much easier time. It's not about English speakers tolerance, it is all about the…

Depends on the language, I suppose, but isn't the text of the book the bigger problem than the language? sprintf, uint64_t, #ifndef may as well be foreign languages to English speakers too. There's a benefit if the mnemonics are native to you, but your comment sounds like it's the book that's the key obstacle, and less the language.

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

#434

Post by diegoperini » Fri, Oct 25, 2019, 2:51 PM UTC

jandrese wrote: post #355

thesuperbigfrog wrote: post #344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can write Perl in Latin or Klingon: Latin from https://metacpan.org/pod/release/DCONWAY/Lingua-Romana-Perli... : use Lingua::Romana::Perligata; adnota Illud Cribrum Eratothenis maximum tum val inquementum tum biguttam tum stadium egresso scribe. da meo maximo vestibulo perlegementum. maximum comementum tum novumversum egresso scribe. meis listis conscribementa II tum maximum da. dum damentum nexto listis decapita…

Congratulations! You have discovered the absolute nerdiest activity on the planet. Writing Perl in Klingon.

Writing Perl is enough.

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

#435

Post by xvilka » Fri, Oct 25, 2019, 2:51 PM UTC

In fact, support for languages like Arabic, Farsi, or Hebrew is still pretty bad in many computer programs. This is why we started an initiative to improve the support of any bidirectional language in terminal emulators and terminal programs, e.g. vim, emacs, mutt, ncurses-based programs, etc. I maintain a list[1] of the supported programs. The specification[2] of a new standard is also available, moreover GNOME Terminal supports it since GNOME 3.34 version.

[1] https://gist.github.com/XVilka/a0e49e1c65370ba11c17

[2] https://terminal-wg.pages.freedesktop.org/bidi/recommendatio...

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

#436

Post by sildur » Fri, Oct 25, 2019, 2:54 PM 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…

Sí, tienes razón. Deberíamos extender eso y expresarnos cada uno en nuestro idioma. La experiencia va a ser enriquecedora y seguramente no vamos a encontrar pegas.

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

#437

Post by tomcooks » Fri, Oct 25, 2019, 2:54 PM UTC

falcolas wrote: post #374

jacquesm wrote: post #323

If 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.

English speakers being tolerant?

I suggest pretending to be a foreigner and ask for directions, next time you have 10 minutes to waste.

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

#438

Post by chme » Fri, Oct 25, 2019, 2:55 PM UTC

tempodox wrote: post #294

cyborgx7 wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

da nicht für

syntax error

Excel and other spreadsheet software products localize their function names.

So people learn to use those in their native language which is great.

But if they need to use the same software with a different language setting, because they move or work abroad, they have to relearn all those function names, which sucks...

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

#439

Post by opwieurposiu » Fri, Oct 25, 2019, 2:56 PM UTC

jacquesm wrote: post #409

falcolas wrote: post #374

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yes, they are. There is a huge difference between having a language as you mother tongue versus having it as a secondary one. My English is reasonably good, I started young (at age 10) and yet, by the time I was 14 or so the programming books I had access to were way over my head. If English had been my first language I would have had a much easier time. It's not about English speakers tolerance, it is all about the…

Semi related question: Did you pick up the word "grok" from reading Stranger in a Strange Land or from somewhere else?

That book was so much about the importance of the martian language and how language shapes perception.

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

#440

Post by hypacrosaurus » Fri, Oct 25, 2019, 2:57 PM UTC

thbr99 wrote: post #236

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.

If given an opportunity, the French language police of Québec would have adopted and enforced it in Québec.

« the French language police of Québec » = the institution who defines the institutionnal use of the official language in the state, like all countries in the world do. France have almost the same laws as Law 101.