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Non-English-based programming languages

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Re: Non-English-based programming languages

#3

Post by bianco »

The English language is certainly one of the most flexible ones, on the positive side, and one of loosest ones, on the negative side.

In English, even the most stupid thoughts sound right, just because of the language-culture itself.

So, it would certainly be very exciting to have e.g. a perfect programming language, expressing itself in say Arabic or Hebrew; but, on the other side, computers and real intelligence (or: AI and Real Human Intelligence) are so far away from each other, that it really doesn't matter how 'stupid' the programming-language-language is...

Re: Non-English-based programming languages

#5

Post by jws »

I think that the natural language of the 30 or so keywords that define a language does not pose a serious barrier.

Consider Lisp's cons, car, and cdr: these are not part of anyone's natural language yet they survive just fine.

Re: Non-English-based programming languages

#7

Post by jwilliams »

bianco wrote: post #3

The English language is certainly one of the most flexible ones, on the positive side, and one of loosest ones, on the negative side. In English, even the most stupid thoughts sound right, just because of the language-culture itself. So, it would certainly be very exciting to have e.g. a perfect programming language, expressing itself in say Arabic or Hebrew; but, on the other side, computers and real intelligence (o…

In English, even the most stupid thoughts sound right, just because of the language-culture itself.

Well - that certainly doesn't sound right to me.

Re: Non-English-based programming languages

#8

Post by barredo »

jwilliams wrote: post #6

They don't seem to distinguish between the language itself and the API. I'd think for many languages the core keywords wouldn't be too hard to translate... Translating the .NET API would be a bigger call (there seem to be examples of this there).

How many words a non-native-english speaker programmer (like me) has to learn? I bet no more than 30-50.

It's not a a problem for 99% of programmers, so that's the reason most of languages stayed in English without the need of being translated

Re: Non-English-based programming languages

#10

Post by jwilliams »

barredo wrote: post #8
jwilliams wrote: post #6

They don't seem to distinguish between the language itself and the API. I'd think for many languages the core keywords wouldn't be too hard to translate... Translating the .NET API would be a bigger call (there seem to be examples of this there).

How many words a non-native-english speaker programmer (like me) has to learn? I bet no more than 30-50. It's not a a problem for 99% of programmers, so that's the reason most of languages stayed in English without the need of being translated

Yeah I agree - Their use in a programming language is generally so abstract. Knowing the words "for" or "do" doesn't really help a whole lot in understanding a loop construct.

This isn't true for the API though - the API contains a much greater lexicon.

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