On Programming Languages
raganwald.posterous.com
On Programming Languages
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Re: On Programming Languages
#2What on earth is this post even talking about? People can name their variables and write their comments in any language they see fit. How you've managed to draw a parallel between the current state of programming languages and "negroes in the army" is astounding...
>I value inclusiveness, that includes including people who don't speak English.
This is incredibly vacant. You value inclusiveness but you don't cite a single place where you'd like to see that. Do you want more programming languages to be constructed in Portuguese? Do you want to see more French comments on HN? What specifically are you looking for?
Edit: Perhaps I'm missing something crucial in the linked video? YouTube is blocked at my workplace.
Edit2: Alright, there's been a line added to the post referencing http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4886560 Although I might disagree with the post, there is certainly context for its existence now.
Re: On Programming Languages
#3Are the translational grammar of latin based languages such that you could just add more reserved words? If we were to add for/if/etc for other languages that use our alphabet, would it be just one word each time? Would an imperfect single word be chosen over a better fitting phrase, because the nuance is not needed?
Who is this aimed at? It's relevant for OLPC-educated, but if you were contributing to Lua (Brazilian Portuguese) or Ruby (Japanese) you'd be on english mailing lists. OLPC in South Africa alone has 11 languages. Maybe we can't add reserved words and entirely portable scripts, maybe there has to be conversion, and modes/switches like english-reserveds, european-reserved, all-reserveds.
Re: On Programming Languages
#4What on earth is this post even talking about? People can name their variables and write their comments in any language they see fit. How you've managed to draw a parallel between the current state of programming languages and "negroes in the army" is astounding... >I value inclusiveness, that includes including people who don't speak English. This is incredibly vacant. You value inclusiveness but you don't cite a si…
It's probably a response to this discussion: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4886560
Re: On Programming Languages
#5What on earth is this post even talking about? People can name their variables and write their comments in any language they see fit. How you've managed to draw a parallel between the current state of programming languages and "negroes in the army" is astounding... >I value inclusiveness, that includes including people who don't speak English. This is incredibly vacant. You value inclusiveness but you don't cite a si…
The post is talking about doing things like participating in discussions, submitting issues or feature requests, reading or writing documentation, and so on. Try submitting a pull request to any major OS project. Can you document your changes in Spanish?
Re: On Programming Languages
#6This article is not "On Programming Languages", it's "On the Use of English in Software Development". Has anybody coined the term "linkbait-and-switch" yet? I'm not against the inclusivity proposed, I just don't like the overloading of the term "programming language" here. Grumble grumble.
Re: On Programming Languages
#7Interesting article. We actually just had a discussion on this topic the other day at work. Oddly, or out of best practice, whatever you want to call it, we try to keep all code documented in English, written in English, etc, but almost everyone involved on our projects would understand it better if it was in the native language. I do sometimes wonder how big of a difference it would make in the community, since most coders just read the source code anyway. I've had to work on a couple foreign language code bases in my life and it wasn't anything extravagantly difficult. Though, then again these were all european languages where you more or less know what something means if you speak a couple anyway, that's not the case with something like chinese or arabic. Anyways, I wouldn't mind not forcing the "everything" in English, I think if it was a looser atmosphere more people would get involved.
Re: On Programming Languages
#8This article is not "On Programming Languages", it's "On the Use of English in Software Development". Has anybody coined the term "linkbait-and-switch" yet? I'm not against the inclusivity proposed, I just don't like the overloading of the term "programming language" here. Grumble grumble.
The author is the cad responsible for this flagrant violation of blog title ethics:
https://github.com/raganwald/homoiconic/blob/master/2011/12/...
Re: On Programming Languages
#9What on earth is this post even talking about? People can name their variables and write their comments in any language they see fit. How you've managed to draw a parallel between the current state of programming languages and "negroes in the army" is astounding... >I value inclusiveness, that includes including people who don't speak English. This is incredibly vacant. You value inclusiveness but you don't cite a si…
The post is talking about doing things like participating in discussions, submitting issues or feature requests, reading or writing documentation, and so on. Try submitting a pull request to any major OS project. Can you document your changes in Spanish?
I'd imagine you can document your changes in the language the product has been documented in previously.
Reading and understanding software is an already difficult task, I'm not sure why you insist we add an additional layer of complexity to it. Your intentions are noble, but I think the end result is a detriment not only to any English committers, but to the Japananese committer who is also expected to be able to understand/translate Spanish and English. And when she starts committing in Japanese, your original Spanish committer is now saddled with an additional layer of complexity.
The army analogy is a little bizarre to me as well. The issues of discrimination you pointed out were not centralized around communication issues. I imagine most militaries don't support all the languages of the world due to the obvious communication problems this would create.
Re: On Programming Languages
#10This article is not "On Programming Languages", it's "On the Use of English in Software Development". Has anybody coined the term "linkbait-and-switch" yet? I'm not against the inclusivity proposed, I just don't like the overloading of the term "programming language" here. Grumble grumble.
The author is the cad responsible for this flagrant violation of blog title ethics: https://github.com/raganwald/homoiconic/blob/master/2011/12/...
It's okay, you can atone by writing a survey of programming languages and using the title "On the Use of English in Software Development".