On Programming Languages • Hacker News Board

Re: On Programming Languages

#31

Post by fijal » Fri, Dec 07, 2012, 11:40 PM UTC

raganwald wrote: post #28

fijal wrote: post #22

The argument comparing to gay/woman is just a fallacy. you can learn english, everyone can. You cannot stop being a woman or being gay (despite the latter being argued many times in the past). And you should learn english. The problem is not because you have to. The problem is to communicate better and to share more. The exclusion principle will still apply, but instead excluding bigger group (people not speaking lan…

you can learn english, everyone can. You cannot stop being a woman or being gay That argument doesn't persuade me. Let's say you could stop being a woman, perhaps by taking hormones and having an operation. Would it suddenly be ok to have a male-only company, since obviously people are choosing to remain women? Your second paragraph is simply arguing something I already agree with, namely the utility of everyone usin…

You're bringing a strawman. Obviously having an operation is slightly worse than learning english.

Regarding the utility - the final utility of male and female company is known to be better than a male only one, even if for a short period of time it drops. A utility of everyone speaking the language he pleases ends up with a situation of lack of communication, which is certainly worse than everyone speaking broken english.

What I would argue instead (and it has been on HN) is that we should allow more broken english and be less nazi about it. It's fine to restrict people who know english better to use only simple words (for example) to lower barriers of entry. It's also ok for people to use english that's not gramatically correct (like no doubt, this post).

Re: On Programming Languages

#32

Post by toothlesstiger » Fri, Dec 07, 2012, 11:57 PM UTC

raganwald wrote: post #28

fijal wrote: post #22

The argument comparing to gay/woman is just a fallacy. you can learn english, everyone can. You cannot stop being a woman or being gay (despite the latter being argued many times in the past). And you should learn english. The problem is not because you have to. The problem is to communicate better and to share more. The exclusion principle will still apply, but instead excluding bigger group (people not speaking lan…

you can learn english, everyone can. You cannot stop being a woman or being gay That argument doesn't persuade me. Let's say you could stop being a woman, perhaps by taking hormones and having an operation. Would it suddenly be ok to have a male-only company, since obviously people are choosing to remain women? Your second paragraph is simply arguing something I already agree with, namely the utility of everyone usin…

Nonsense. To take your example of a Brazilian programmer, he doesn't have to stop speaking Portuguese to speak English. Your hypothetical woman has to stop being a woman. Same applies to your other examples of exclusion. If I learn Japanese to participate in the direction of Ruby language, I don't have to stop speaking English, German, or Chinese to do so.

Exclusion based on lack of knowledge is fundamentally different than exclusion based on innate characteristic.

Re: On Programming Languages

#33

Post by snogglethorpe » Sat, Dec 08, 2012, 12:02 AM UTC

fijal wrote: post #31

raganwald wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you can learn english, everyone can. You cannot stop being a woman or being gay That argument doesn't persuade me. Let's say you could stop being a woman, perhaps by taking hormones and having an operation. Would it suddenly be ok to have a male-only company, since obviously people are choosing to remain women? Your second paragraph is simply arguing something I already agree with, namely the utility of everyone usin…

You're bringing a strawman. Obviously having an operation is slightly worse than learning english. Regarding the utility - the final utility of male and female company is known to be better than a male only one, even if for a short period of time it drops. A utility of everyone speaking the language he pleases ends up with a situation of lack of communication, which is certainly worse than everyone speaking broken en…

What seems to happen in practice is that either:

(1) If a majority of particpants are skilled in English, the less skilled will just submit the best they can, and the better speakers will correct (e.g. at patch-review time) anything too confusing in the same way they correct code bugs.

(2) If the majority of speakers aren't skilled in English, you often end up with amusingly misspelled variable names and odd comment grammar, but most people can't tell the difference anyway, so it's cool....

[I work for a Japanese company, so many internal projects just use Japanese for most comments/commits (although I'm free to use English if I want, because most people can understand it more or less).... but because of character-set restrictions, variable names are still mostly amusingly-misspelled English...]

E.g., there doesn't really seem to be all that much of a problem.

Re: On Programming Languages

#34

Post by stickfigure » Mon, Dec 10, 2012, 2:45 AM UTC

raganwald wrote: post #30

stickfigure wrote: post #23

This is preposterous. There is no moral equivalence between requiring code to be submitted in a particular language and requiring racial segregation. "All code must be submitted in English" is morally equivalent to "All code must be submitted in Python" - which is to say, there is no moral perspective whatsoever. Maybe it makes sense to have an all English (or all Python) codebase, maybe not, but these are logistical…

I don't think it's preposterous to note that there are people who don't speak English and wanting to include them, any more than it's preposterous to note that there are people who can't afford an education and wanting to find a way to get them one, or noting that there are people who don't like in the US but wanting to find a way to have them participate in programming. There may not be a reasonable trade-off betwee…

This is disingenuous. You are not merely suggesting that we be be more inclusive of non-english speakers. You imply that requiring english is the moral equivalent of racial segregation. That is preposterous.

This argument is not even reasonable on its face. You're overlooking one of the essential characteristics of utility-based pro-segregation/anti-gay arguments - they're demonstrably false. It's clear that a desegregated military is more effective, not less. Homosexuality, I am sure, will prove itself similarly.