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Draig, a Welsh Programming Language

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Re: Draig, a Welsh Programming Language

#11

Post by AnonC »

zabzonk wrote: post #6
librasteve wrote: post #2

Question: is it a good idea to introduce kids to coding in their mother tongue like this?

i've always given the advice "program in english, comments, variables, function names, everything", and "always use a uk/us keyboard unless you absolutely have to enter localised strings, and even better get someone else to do that"

I’ve seen before that this is not followed in certain cases, such as the entire development team being in a specific country where some or many team members don’t know English (well enough). As an anecdote, I’ve seen a team in a large multinational company (US origin) in Spain that used function names, variable names, database table names (and column names), log message text and many other things in Spanish. English was only for the language keywords because that’s what the compiler would accept.

Re: Draig, a Welsh Programming Language

#12

Post by zabzonk »

cmwelsh wrote: post #10
zabzonk wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i've always given the advice "program in english, comments, variables, function names, everything", and "always use a uk/us keyboard unless you absolutely have to enter localised strings, and even better get someone else to do that"

China disregards that and there is an absolutely massive ecosystem of Free and Open Source Software out there if you can read and write their code.

I know little about china (except i like the food and art) but do they actually write code in their native language(s)?!

Re: Draig, a Welsh Programming Language

#14

Post by afavour »

zabzonk wrote: post #4

whenever you would use 'l', you have to use 'll'? i'llll get my coat

I know it’s just a joke but the “ll” in Welsh is a completely distinct character in the Welsh alphabet and doesn’t sound anything like “l”, nor is it used as a substitute for l. It’s rarely used but it has its own Middle-Welsh character: ỻ

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ll

Re: Draig, a Welsh Programming Language

#15

Post by zabzonk »

afavour wrote: post #14
zabzonk wrote: post #4

whenever you would use 'l', you have to use 'll'? i'llll get my coat

I know it’s just a joke but the “ll” in Welsh is a completely distinct character in the Welsh alphabet and doesn’t sound anything like “l”, nor is it used as a substitute for l. It’s rarely used but it has its own Middle-Welsh character: ỻ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ll

> I know it’s just a joke

Yeah, sorry, I couldn't resist. I'm not Welsh but I lived there when I was a small child, and happily holidayed there after. It is a great country.

Re: Draig, a Welsh Programming Language

#16

Post by mbork_pl »

zabzonk wrote: post #6
librasteve wrote: post #2

Question: is it a good idea to introduce kids to coding in their mother tongue like this?

i've always given the advice "program in english, comments, variables, function names, everything", and "always use a uk/us keyboard unless you absolutely have to enter localised strings, and even better get someone else to do that"

I've been working with a codebase for a very specific domain where hardly anyone even knew the English terms for the domain-specific things (and some of them probably didn't even exist - highly localized customs etc.). No point in using English then.

Re: Draig, a Welsh Programming Language

#17

Post by anonymous908213 »

throwA29B wrote: post #13
librasteve wrote: post #2

Question: is it a good idea to introduce kids to coding in their mother tongue like this?

No. You want 'for' to be a looping construct with no other meanings. Seeing code in my native language makes me laugh, I can't take it seriously.

I strongly disagree. Take, for example...

  foreach (apple in fruitbasket)
    apple.Eat()
vs.

  for (int i = 0; while i
Even as a low-level programmer, I truly loathe C-style for loops. It takes several seconds to parse them, while the C#-style foreach is instantly grokkable with zero mental overhead. When you're scanning over thousands of lines of codes, the speed and ease of reading constructs like these adds up and makes a huge difference. The desire to apply human-friendly syntax to low-level programming is among the greatest motivating factors for the language I'm working on. All of that being said, I think there is a huge advantage in having code that reads like natural language you understand, rather than having keywords that are foreign and meaningless to you.

Re: Draig, a Welsh Programming Language

#18

Post by anonymous908213 »

zabzonk wrote: post #12
cmwelsh wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

China disregards that and there is an absolutely massive ecosystem of Free and Open Source Software out there if you can read and write their code.

I know little about china (except i like the food and art) but do they actually write code in their native language(s)?!

I can only speak for Japan, but I suspect China is the same. In Japan, English programming is the norm because all mainstream programming languages are written in English. Keywords, libraries and documentation are in English, so there's not really any getting around the fact that you have to learn to read at least some English. Some Japanese developers do write identifiers in Japanese where languages support it, and documentation / comments are often written in Japanese, of course.

I, personally, think this is a lamentable state of affairs that raises the barrier to entry for programming, especially for children. There are education-oriented Japanese programming languages that try to fill the niche for teaching children, but I think it would be beneficial if there were serious languages with a full ecosystem rather than ones designed to be training wheels before learning English programming languages.

Re: Draig, a Welsh Programming Language

#19

Post by melagonster »

zabzonk wrote: post #12
cmwelsh wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

China disregards that and there is an absolutely massive ecosystem of Free and Open Source Software out there if you can read and write their code.

I know little about china (except i like the food and art) but do they actually write code in their native language(s)?!

Nope, they just add huge Chinese comments.
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