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Italian Ruby

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Re: Italian Ruby

#61

Post by Kreotiko »

StavrosK wrote: post #43
Kreotiko wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You simply can’t be effective in programming without knowing English. Having few words translated in your language wouldn’t help much. Moreover it is much easier to learn English than learning how to code.

> Moreover it is much easier to learn English than learning how to code. I know many, many people who would disagree.

Stavros, you said it yourself. It depends on the language you already speak. Learning a programming language doesn’t have any starting point whereas a human language has. Regardless of how different the languages, you can still find similarities in sounds, phrase constructions, etc. Learning to code doesn’t have this

Re: Italian Ruby

#62

Post by blackbear_ »

remix2000 wrote: post #33

Related stuff: * Claim that word order in Japanese suits ST-style message-passing OOP better than English: https://thoughtbot.com/blog/learning-japanese-the-rubyist-wa... * APL, a language that uses symbols instead of keywords: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/APL_(programming_language) * Non-English-based PLs on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-English-based_programming_... * How does English proficiency co…

I am highly skeptical of the last paper you linked.

First, they make the classical mistake of concluding causation where there is only correlation. In particular, there is no discussion whatsoever about possible confounders, i.e. common factors that influence both programming ability and English proficiency. Some on top of my mind:

- Owning a computer with internet access at home

- Effort/ability from the individual students (reflected in overall grades in all subjects)

- Students' language ability in their mother tongue (can hint at students' difficulties in expressing their thoughts in a structured manner)

Second, their statistical analysis is inadequately simple. In particular, given that they only have 16 students with intermediate English knowledge, I would not be surprised if the difference in grades distribution was not statistically significant.

Third, quoting from the paper:

> In analyzing the data, the grade E for computer programming course was excluded because it did not reflect the relationship between English language proficiency and computer programming ability.

This is quite a red flag, they are essentially removing data that does not show the correlation they want! And nothing is said about these students: how many they were, their English proficiency, etc.

Finally, as anecdotal evidence, a sizable portion of my classmates were unable to come up with even the simplest algorithms, even when taught in and asked to use pseudo-code inspired from their mother tongue.

Re: Italian Ruby

#63

Post by WrtCdEvrydy »

seek3r wrote: post #45
jaclaz wrote: post #23

Also, sometimes, translations have a different (perceived) meaning. A pet peeve of mine is "by default". In Italian it is translated (correctly) "per difetto", and it is "fine" when other people already know the term, but otherways "difetto" is also the translation of "defect", and you will have a tough time explaining to a layman that it is not a "defect" in that other sense. Another "queer" word (I found it in the…

A fun one is: “throwing an error”, which can be translated in “lanciare (launch) un errore” or “tornare (return) un errore” or “causare (cause) un errore”.

tornare is probably more likely unless you caused the error on purpose.

Re: Italian Ruby

#64

Post by dewey »

kapakos wrote: post #48
pizza234 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We should fix our schools, A large part of the english language problem in the southern Europe (it's not just an italian problem) is cultural. The english language is considerably more embedded in the culture of the northern European countries; for example, there's considerably less dubbing. If Italy stopped dubbing (which will never happen, because it's a tradition), italians would speak a considerably better Engl…

The Germans are dubbing and they usually speak English quite well. My experience with Italian as well as French don’t like to learn or speak English.

I think that's also slowly changing as 10-15 years ago everyone was watching dubbed german TV shows on TV while now kids are just on social media with a lot more international content and influencers.

Re: Italian Ruby

#65

Post by Tade0 »

I spent a few years in Italy but never learned the language properly(my only Italian friend there happened to speak my language - Polish), still it strikes me as odd that Italians should have issues with learning English when the two languages are grammatically much closer than English or Italian is to e.g. any Slavic language.

Thing is, the way I speak Italian is I use English as an intermediary language, because at least the tenses are somewhat similar.

Of course this strategy falls flat on its face in a more complex conversation, because spoken Italian is chock full of phrases - my favourite being "in bocca al lupo" - which taken literally translates to "in the wolf's mouth!" (note the lack of predicate here) and to me sounds no different than "Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra".

One other thing is that during my time in that country I was surprised to note that the IT job market there is actually a little smaller than in my native Poland. Weirdly enough the salaries are roughly the same - especially after taxes. I can't explain this, because I met a lot of smart and passionate about their work people in Italy.

Re: Italian Ruby

#66

Post by uomopertica »

billars wrote: post #29
Kreotiko wrote: post #14

No intention to be rude but the Readme page doesn’t seem written by somebody native. I understand that English is basically the only language for technical writing but writing that bad in Italian defies the purpose of this Gem altogether.

I think you are wrong, see the author, maybe it is not the best italian but nobody is perfect.

I personally do not have too big a problem with the author’s italian. I’m just not sold on his whole premise of “not being an English native speaker means you think the algorithm in your native language first”.

Maybe I’m biased from too many years of programming, but while I see the advantage of graphical languages (e.g. Scratch) for beginners, I don’t really see the point in translating Ruby...

Re: Italian Ruby

#67

Post by neallindsay »

Ruby is great for these kind of shenanigans: https://github.com/searls/emoruby

I worry about the cultural hegemony of the English language. Projects like this are interesting, but I don't see a world where they overcome the inertia of English-based programming.

Ruby itself is a great example - created by a Japanese guy, but entirely with English keywords.

Maybe if China makes a concerted effort they could do it. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Re: Italian Ruby

#68

Post by Kreotiko »

martopix wrote: post #53
Kreotiko wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You simply can’t be effective in programming without knowing English. Having few words translated in your language wouldn’t help much. Moreover it is much easier to learn English than learning how to code.

Based on what do you say this? I have my browser set to non-geographically specific, and when I ask programming questions to it, there are many, many answers in chinese and japanese. If the programming languages statements themselves were in those languages, a chinese or japanese speaker (in my field) would not need english at all.

From my experience the amount and the quality of resources available in English is simply not comparable with any other language. Surely it is possible without but much harder. I am Italian, during my studies I had the chance to read technical books both translated and in original language. The translation is usually very poor. On a daily basis work scenario, no Italian online resource would come close to stackoverflow to help diagnose issues quickly. Moreover, it takes time for official documentations to be translated in other languages. Even years in some times. It really depends on your sector. If you work in a niche area where you don’t necessarily need to be up to date with the industry you could survive without English.

Re: Italian Ruby

#69

Post by untog »

I remember many years ago when MooTools (yes, that long ago) announced localised APIs as an April Fools joke. At the time I thought it was an interesting idea!

I do wonder if there’s still something to it. I can imagine that in the not too distant future we won’t check in text code files any more, instead checking in ASTs that represent the code. That would end all the silly debates about code formatting: everyone would check out their preferred format then check in something standard. Maybe languages could be treated the same way.

Re: Italian Ruby

#70

Post by seek3r »

TulliusCicero wrote: post #42
browsergap wrote: post #16

Only ~5% of Earth speaks English natively. Another 15% speak it as an nth language. I think English based programming is an anomaly that came out of the post-WWII US/UK cultural world order, and from that sustained economic boom came modern computers, languages and the internet to a mass market. 20% of the world speaks Mandarin Chinese (not all as a first language tho). And, about the same % as speak English natively…

Programming and English a natural match, no. Programming and a global language, or the global language as a natural match, maybe. There's nothing super special within English itself that makes it particularly well suited for programming, but the fact that it's the global language of business, tourism, air travel, diplomacy, etc. makes a good case for it. English has far, far more non-native speakers than any other la…

Taking aside the difficulty of learning the language, which language would be a good replacement?

I don’t mean it to be provocative, I’m genuinely curious.

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