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Non-English-based programming languages

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Re: Non-English-based programming languages

#51

Post by lcedp »

fosap wrote: post #49
lcedp wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You may call my opinion BS but it is harder due to the fact that additional letters take space off the symbols. Examples (assuming you use AltGr) Symbol; English; Russian , ; , ; Shift + . [ ; [ ; AltGr + х { ; Shift + [ ; AltGr + Shift + х See pattern? Though I agree with you - it's not a dealbreaker.

Ok, two modifiers are proably more annoying. Is the Alt-Gr plane not big enough? I have serveral Symbols there that i never ever need, like ðæł¶ŧ←↓→øħħ̣ĸ . Are there essential Cyrillic characters?

No, altgr basically is not used while I still use it to have Russian over Ukrainian which has just few different letters іы їъ єэ ґ:-D

I could set up a lot of symbols though altgt but they won't mostly much English layout. But I don't need to because languages I program in are English based.

If I knew German, I would use exclusively German layout as apparently you do. But I need actually 4: En, Eo(that not much but still), Uk, Ru - those two every day. So I contracted it to 2: Latin/Cyrillic. :)

Re: Non-English-based programming languages

#52

Post by polemic »

ajuc wrote: post #48

I wonder how programming language based on fusional natural languages with cases could work. Some ideas (warning - long and useless read): - everything is an expression - expressions have Cases. Default case (without postfixes) is Source Case - cases are like roles for parts of expression in given complex expression context (allow us to change order of arguments in expressions without named parameters for example, an…

Love it.

I know a bit of Finnish, and I can imagine that a programming language built on the principles of Finnish grammar would be beautifully expressive as well as extremely terse.

For example, maybe '-ss' denotes 'class'. Functions and methods with '-ef' with an optional return type '-int', '-ing' (string), '-oat' (float). Start a loop iterator by adding '-oop' to an iterable? Modify conditionals change their behaviour, e.g. 'ifret' (if/return) etc

   Fooss:
     barefint:
       thingoop(i)
         ifret i == someValue
Looks strange, but I if you're used to the concept I wonder if it would be more efficient.

Re: Non-English-based programming languages

#53

Post by Philosophy »

angersock wrote: post #33
quarterto wrote: post #30

I ended up on the (Chinese-language) page for 丙正正¹, a Chinese C++ variant. There was a code example, which I ran through Google Translate to see what would happen. The result is surprisingly readable (and obviously a C-family language)²: Empty chess file :: set comments (character * s, integer n) { If (n> = maximum number of comments) For (; maximum number of annotations ¹ http://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E4%B8%99%E6%AD…

Now that's just fucking horrifying. D: I have a translation of "Design of the Unix Operating System" in Chinese, and take great comfort in the fact that I can still get the gist of all the source code listings--even despite the comments in Chinese. I admire the simplicity of the grammar in Chinese (from the year I took of it in college), but honestly I find logographic languages are kind of gross. EDIT: Fine, fine, I…

geraffes are so dumb

Re: Non-English-based programming languages

#54

Post by elementai »

lcedp wrote: post #38

I think it's an awful idea. Let's take Cyrillic languages, Ukrainian/Russian as an example. * Alphabet has 33+ letters, so there is no space left for programmer's favorite symbols on layout: @#$^&{}[]|~` . Yep. * In Math variables' names traditionally are Latin/Greek letters, Cyrillic is used only when teaching kids. Again: switching layout all the time? No, thanks. * Words are simply much longer. And I mean much. In…

And yet there's a https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1C:Enterprise being a leading software suite in Russia. It's source code terrifies me every time.

Re: Non-English-based programming languages

#55

Post by guhemama2 »

crazygringo wrote: post #25
guhemama2 wrote: post #3

My rather simplistic view: as a native Portuguese speaker, I strongly refute the idea of programming languages (and even coding) in a language other than English. Besides the obvious reasons (globalized world, outsourcing, multinational corporations, etc), English is much less expressive than the Romance languages [1], which makes it a better formal language. 1 - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romance_languages

As someone who is a native English speaker, but close to native level in Portuguese (lived in Brazil for 8 years), I'm curious what you mean by English being less expressive -- I've never heard that before. Both languages have their expressive poets, authors, etc. It's easier to rhyme in Portuguese (it's almost like cheating, since the verbs all end in the same syllables), it's easier to modify the grammar classes of…

As a matter of fact, I know that English, as a natural language, is much more expressive in the sense that you can communicate many ideas using the same expressions.

Portuguese, for example, is much more expressive in the sense that you can communicate the same idea in many different ways, which may have different meanings.

There is also the contractions issue and the omission of the subject of an expression ("eu estava" == "eu tava" == "tava" == "I was"), which complicates it even more. And all of this is actually valid, depending on the linguist you "follow". ;)

Well, I did not make myself very clear, but this is what I wanted mean when I talked about expressiveness.

PS: I wanted to write something about linguistic relativity too, but I can't remember, lol.

Re: Non-English-based programming languages

#56

Post by guhemama2 »

maw wrote: post #8
guhemama2 wrote: post #3

My rather simplistic view: as a native Portuguese speaker, I strongly refute the idea of programming languages (and even coding) in a language other than English. Besides the obvious reasons (globalized world, outsourcing, multinational corporations, etc), English is much less expressive than the Romance languages [1], which makes it a better formal language. 1 - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romance_languages

I think you'd have a very difficult time convincing a serious linguist that English is less expressive than the Romance languages.

I bet that'd be hard, ha!

Re: Non-English-based programming languages

#57

Post by mistercow »

angersock wrote: post #35
mistercow wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems to me like using symbols instead of words makes the most sense. It wouldn't be particularly harder to use for English speakers, and it might actually make code easier to read, since there would be less cognitive load in distinguishing keywords from identifiers.

Yeah, okay: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/APL_%28programming_language%29

Yeah, the problems there are that the symbols don't have easy to remember names, and that they can't be typed in a normal environment. Multi-character ascii symbols would be a lot more accessible.

Re: Non-English-based programming languages

#58

Post by [deleted] »

ajuc wrote: post #48

I wonder how programming language based on fusional natural languages with cases could work. Some ideas (warning - long and useless read): - everything is an expression - expressions have Cases. Default case (without postfixes) is Source Case - cases are like roles for parts of expression in given complex expression context (allow us to change order of arguments in expressions without named parameters for example, an…

[deleted]

Re: Non-English-based programming languages

#59

Post by mistercow »

archivator wrote: post #47
Avshalom wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have 104 keys on my keyboard and 4 of them are modifiers. The English alphabet isn't the Latin/Greek alphabet either. And I am absolutely astounded that Russians apparently have never invented the concept of an abbreviation or contraction. One does wonder how soviets ever managed to program their computers.

As an aside, if you (the reader, not Avshalom) haven't read much Russian literature, Russian is the language where you take the first syllable of every word in a long phrase and you make a new word: Министерство здравоохранения => Минздрав (Ministry of Health => Minheal) Министерство юстиции => Минюст (Ministry of Justice => Minjust) etc, etc. As a foreigner, I found that quite peculiar though it doesn't seem to be a…

Ah, so that's where that came from in 1984. It all makes sense.
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