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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

#441

Post by zrobotics »

knodi123 wrote: post #432
big_chungus wrote: post #351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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".

Ironic? I think one of the main reasons English has become such an international language is how bastardized it is and how easily words & phrases are borrowed from other languages.

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

#442

Post by mar77i »

tom_mellior wrote: post #399
yorwba wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The agent still needs to hear the complete command to carry it out, so there's no strong pressure to prefer a particular word order. In German, the difference between the imperative "Machen Sie das!" [Do that, you (polite form of address).] and the declarative "Sie machen das." [You (polite form of address) are doing that.] is that the imperative does not put the agent first.

Interesting point about German, though du/Sie isn't the kind of "agent" I was thinking of. I meant something where you name the agent by name, like "Frau Huber, machen Sie das!". And yes, I know you can put the name at the end as well. The du/Sie in such sentences is something that's specific to German compared to the other languages I know, which don't need (or even allow) the pronoun: "do this", "faites ça", "gjør…

Interesting how German doesn't allow to drop the addressing pronoun due to how the sentence structure works, but Scandinavian readily allows even the number of addressees to be derived from the context. I guess I prefer English over German as the language for programming because it shoehorns a lot of structure on a later, more boiled-down incarnation of Germanic, and notably (therefore?) ships many short and flashy words, such as "if", "on", "not", "do".

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

#443

Post by rtkwe »

rtkwe wrote: post #388
AimHere wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So if it's not such a huge barrier for a foreign programmer to program in an English-centric computer programming language, surely the same can be said about non-Arabic speakers who might want, or have to deal with this language?

As an English speaker with a US keyboard I would have a very hard time with قلب because I'd have to learn how to at least read Arabic and how to type it. In any other language, using say Spanish, using Latin script I at least only have to learn that importar in this Spanish language means include the library. In an Arabic language it'd maybe be استيراد which I'd have to memorize the whole word AND how to type it, whi…

I understand as an native English speaker I'm in a fortunate position that by a combination of history and random chance computer development happened largely in my language. But given about 70% of the world uses Latin script keeping languages largely based in the English language the majority of the world is able to use their native script at least which is one less hurdle to learning to program.

What I think may be more useful for bringing more people into programming in their native language would be thinking about providing transliterations where, for example, the Python keywords are translated into Arabic. Doing that Arabic speakers could write in their own language and English speakers could run a utility that maps from the Arabic keywords to the current standard English keywords. Stuff like variable names gets a little tricky there I'll admit, not sure how to handle them, maybe Romanize them too?

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

#444

Post by danharaj »

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…

They had us in the first half I'm not gonna lie.

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

#445

Post by Geimfari »

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…

Air traffic control at domestic airports in many regions do communicate with pilots in the local language (even if they're are all able to switch to English at a moment's notice).

It's all just jargon, for those of us working in the field it's really not difficult to both know the international Latin medical terms and the local terms to use with patients or colleagues.

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

#446

Post by babuskov »

eru wrote: post #116
WalterBright wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, it's only like 20 keywords to learn. I wish people who come up with all these inscrutable icons would realize that.

Why is learning 20 inscrutable icons harder?

It's hard to reason and talk about something until you name it. With named keywords, you already have a name for it, even if you say it different than the English pronunciation.

Unless the script is so foreign to you (ex. Latin vs Arabic) that the keywords look like inscrutable symbols anyway.

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

#447

Post by shitgoose »

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…

What is wrong with FORTRAN??

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

#448

Post by mar77i »

tpush wrote: post #178
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…

This comment is a good way to see all the HN users who go off of a comment without reading it fully.

I'd prefer to not have to discuss problems in Ali's code I can't read, yet his algorithm doesn't work, but I can fix typos in our resident elderly COBOL programmer's output, even though he's from SE Asia and his English is rather basic. It seems like a personal preference, yet I think it's more complicated than that.

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

#449

Post by lgl »

____Sash---701_ wrote: post #413
jandrese wrote: post #355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Qapla!

I had completely forgotten about this and honestly laughed out loud. Learn some more at:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=auqS6FR_RDE

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

#450

Post by gumby »

This is very exciting, especially given the Lisp-like notation.

high level (non-assembly/machine code) programming has been stuck in an indo-european rut -- a productive one of course, but like so many things one that has a particular world view.

If programming had started in Arabic would we have developed generic functions sooner? Perhaps with different views of type systems? The fundamental structure of Arabic is quite different from the IE languages.

(I'm a native speaker of English from childhood but used to speak Arabic, and do use other languages on a daily basis).

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