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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

#601

Post by dang »

johnisgood wrote: post #384
pgcj_poster wrote: post #364

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, if you want to start an international project, then English is a pretty good language to use. However, I have heard people say that all software everywhere should be written in English, including things like personal projects and internal tools for companies in non-anglophone countries. I think that's kind of ridiculous.

Something about non-English comments in source code is really off-putting. That, and if you generally do want people to understand, then you should use English. If that does not matter to you, or someone else, then do not.

Please do not post flamebait to HN.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

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

#602

Post by hhas01 »

big_chungus wrote: post #379
Mirioron wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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)

Not for those who professionally speak Mathematics; which is the audience APL was made to serve, after all.

Amusing so many programmers will complain how they feel horribly excluded by APL, but see no issue with every other programming language in existence speaking exclusively ASCII English. At least Math is a true lingua franca, unlike our awful Saxon bodge. I know which I'd be safer speaking when Aliens come to visit. https://youtu.be/t2TDf9XU09k?t=120

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

#603

Post by hhas01 »

missosoup wrote: post #464
danpalmer wrote: post #455

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not talking about lowering standards, I'm talking about lowering barriers. The difference is that barriers are things that aren't necessary. It is not necessary to be male, white, or English speaking, to be an excellent engineer, and yet those groups are significantly over represented.

> I'm not talking about lowering standards, I'm talking about lowering barriers. One and the same. Making it easier to join a group necessarily lowers the barrier for joining said group which necessarily lowers the standard of said group. There are entire books written about this problem which leads to it being impossible to build large above-average skilled teams. No need to bring identity politics into engineering…

Presented without further comment:

https://image.slidesharecdn.com/tceacsimperative-15072621371...

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

#604

Post by koheripbal »

gkfasdfasdf wrote: post #500

The negative reactions here claiming that everyone should use English are really disappointing, on hacker news of all places. Nobody is saying we need to rewrite the Linux kernel in Arabic. But a language such as this could be a great tool to introduce programming to people who would otherwise be turned away by the language barrier. What is important is not the keywords for, if else, etc but the concepts of logic and…

I think any argument taken to an extreme loses rationality.

On one hand, if more people can understand programming, then we increase the pool of programmers, and that's great. On the other hand, if more people can understand each other's programming, that's also great.

At the end of the day, what matters is that we have the largest possible ecosystem that also allows developers to transcend their geographical / ethnic background.

...and if that's the goal, then maybe it makes most sense for us to favor a unified ascii char set? A few language keywords aren't that big of a price for us all to stay on the same page.

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

#605

Post by marcoseliziario »

pgeorgi wrote: post #274
Archit3ch wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The tech community greatly benefits from settling on a lingua franca. Imagine if everyone posted on StackExchange using their native tongue.

> The tech community greatly benefits from settling on a lingua franca Maybe we see that in a few years, with everything moving to Chinese. > Imagine if everyone posted on StackExchange using their native tongue. Imagine users going to forums in their own language. People actually do that.

Probably the Chinese will embrace and extend the English language, the way the US did.

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

#606

Post by kortilla »

oefrha wrote: post #298
jiofih wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 fr…

Given that one in five person on the planet speaks Chinese as their first language, lack of “foreign” contribution will probably work out okay for them. Global contribution is nice but certainly not necessary. Whoever started the communities have the right to set the rules, using Chinese for (primary) documentation and discussion being one of them. If you don’t like it you can start your own.

> lack of “foreign” contribution will probably work out okay for them.

That’s not how it works. Programming proficiency isn’t randomly distributed across the population.

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

#607

Post by Apofis »

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.

We must inform the Klingons immediately.

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

#608

Post by michaelmrose »

oefrha wrote: post #561
michaelmrose wrote: post #552

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pure numbers mean nothing. Neither a farmer with no internet nor an urban Chinese citizen with a mobile internet but no actual computer is liable to contribute much. There are 800 million Chinese internet users almost all are mobile only. Those that work as professional developers are expected to work insane hours that are unlikely to leave much time for public works after 9 to 9 6 days a week.

> There are 800 million Chinese internet users almost all are mobile only. What's that supposed to imply? Just Googled "number of software developers in China" and "number of software developers in the world". Got 5.79 mil (2017) and 23 mil (2018) as answers. Not sure how accurate but can't be that far off. > Those that work as professional developers are expected to work insane hours that are unlikely to leave much…

Parent poster

>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.

You

>Given that one in five person on the planet speaks Chinese as their first language, lack of “foreign” contribution will probably work out okay for them.

The point is you are using number of native speakers as a proxy for the population of developers being sufficient to support development.

First thing is the single most popular l1 language in China manderin is more like 1 in 8 humans, next the distribution of talent is nothing like distribution of speakers. It looks a lot more like the distribution of wealth because access to computers during formative years or indeed at all is of substantial importance.

There are of course still many Chinese developers of substance. But because highly educated developers in China are both a smaller portion of the population and likely to speak English starting a manderin only software project would mean choosing between only Chinese developers and Chinese devs and the rest of the planet as well.

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

#609

Post by romwell »

xrd wrote: post #566
romwell wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>We haven't yet seen a serious non-English programming language Who is "we"? 1C is a Russian-based domain-specific language that dominates accounting in Russia and neighboring ex-USSR countries[1]. It competes with SAP, and made its founder a billionaire[2]. [1] https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/1С:Предприятие [2] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-06-15/a-russian...

Neither of these two links seem to go into much depth about the language itself. I'm very excited to read more. Do you know if there is a summary in English that explains how it works, and how Russian influenced the language?

I don't know of good English reference off the bat of my head, for obvious reasons.

I'll try to find some, but in the meantime check out these code samples:

https://gist.github.com/alexaandrov/739e16e1786ab2b3d6bc

https://guesto.ru/1c-razrabotka-konfiguratsii-menedzher-zada...

Etc

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

#610

Post by f1refly »

microtherion wrote: post #573
fxj wrote: post #229

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 zur…

German manuals can be weird enough. I still remember one that explains the DEC(x) function as "erniedrigt eine Variable" (It's true that "erniedrigen" can sort of mean "decrement", but it mainly means "degrade").

It's the correct mathematical term for that operation in german though
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