Funny, but ss and ß are not equivalent, e.g., "Busse" != "Buße".
Not the best source of information, but Yahoo answers would say otherwise:
https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20070715142605A...
Your language sucks
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Re: Your language sucks
#32The points made may be salient, but the tone is so condescending as to be nearly unreadable without getting angry. A large number of his points around languages that are radically different from English could be summed up as: "Your language sucks to deal with in computing because your native country didn't develop computing machinery first." This fairly reeks of tone-deafness.
Firstly, the problems he raises would be hard even if the native speakers of a given language were the first to develop computers. In fact I read a fascinating argument (from a link on HN?.. I forget) about Japanese computers developing into "appliances" (a gaming machine and a separate more expensive word processing machine for professionals) because early computers were too under-powered to support the Japanese character set. And that it was because lacking these problems that Americans developed "general" computing first, with the Japanese stuck in the "appliance" mindset until the late nineties.
Secondly, I'm not a native English speaker and I always had this sentiment; "why isn't all computing in English", "why do we have i18n", etc. For one, I don't think everyone studying a standard foreign language is bad, and while English is probably not the best option (Spanish is reportedly easier), it's there, it's as close or closer to being lingua franca as any other, and it's certainly easier than the language with the largest number of native speakers (Chinese). And then even someone with bad English might benefit from at least having File and Edit menus instead of often crazy translations of these things. A little bit of English and a little bit of standardization can't hurt.
Of course ultimately computers ought to display text in all those languages - if not in menus, etc. then certainly in the content itself - so this sentiment of mine isn't very helpful at all. But I wasn't offended by the article in the slightest.
Re: Your language sucks
#33We have lots of shitty representations. Try delving into DateTime sometime. Korean (Hangul) does not suck, btw.
The languages have been around hundreds of years, how long has your machine representation been around? Give it time. It just shows the software is still immature relative to the problem.
Re: Your language sucks
#34OP should be thankful to the Greek, Roman and Arab ancient civilizations for sane-to-compute-with languages. Basically all other languages are so fucked up and mind-fucking that it's no wonder modern mathematics, science, engineering and then computer science developed so fast in particular regions of the world... not to be a cultural bigot, but Sapir-Whorf ftw :)
Re: Your language sucks
#35[deleted]
Re: Your language sucks
#36I enjoyed the article and found it refreshing in this apocalyptic politically correct world.
Re: Your language sucks
#37This article is interesting in that, while it's not the intention of the writer, it seems to point out some technical underpinnings for how language might impact culture. If a computer's handling of a language can vary so drastically, imagine how the human brain must deal with expressing or receiving complex thoughts through these.
I recall reading some discussion of this concept in the field of International Relations' Constructivist theory, but any salient links escape me now.
Re: Your language sucks
#38Funny, but ss and ß are not equivalent, e.g., "Busse" != "Buße".
Not the best source of information, but Yahoo answers would say otherwise: https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20070715142605A...
Yahoo Answers is correct for Switzerland, wrong for Germany and Austria, and wrong for historical uses of ß.
Re: Your language sucks
#39The points made may be salient, but the tone is so condescending as to be nearly unreadable without getting angry. A large number of his points around languages that are radically different from English could be summed up as: "Your language sucks to deal with in computing because your native country didn't develop computing machinery first." This fairly reeks of tone-deafness.
How would those issues with the languages be dealt with if, say, one of the worst offending Asian languages(according to the author) had developed computing machinery first? English+ASCII is simple because the rules are simple, not because the US invented the standard first.
Japan and China have had some kind of computing machinery since the 1980s at least, as well as digital typesetting, so you cannot say "They never had typewriters, that's why their encoding is so messed up".
Hangeul has very simple rules, and is generally simple, but if you want Hangul Jamo (i.e., archaic letters that don't compose neatly into "standardized" syllables), you'll be in a similar place as if you want to produce mediaeval ligatures or thorn letters. Þis is hardly ever neſceſʒary in modern text.
Re: Your language sucks
#40The points made may be salient, but the tone is so condescending as to be nearly unreadable without getting angry. A large number of his points around languages that are radically different from English could be summed up as: "Your language sucks to deal with in computing because your native country didn't develop computing machinery first." This fairly reeks of tone-deafness.
Yes, the tone is a far cry from the cool-headed, neutral, sterile aesthetic one would expect from technical or academic writing. However, the article is very informative, and should probably be bookmarked for later reference --- in case one ever has to do this kind of work. The article may have been written in anger, and thus it provokes anger. Good! Programmers who don't get angry while solving hard, inconvenient, u…
> The article may have been written in anger, and thus it provokes anger. Good! Programmers who don't get angry while solving hard, inconvenient, uncomfortable problems are, in my experience, unlikely to truly solve those problems --- sweeping issues under the rug, or passing the problem to someone else is more likely.
That's a really interesting point and it makes me think of a developer that I've worked with (in a company of non-developers) who cared more about 'inconveniences' than I did.
It occurs to me that he did a much better job of engaging with these 'inconveniences' and fixing them.
Perhaps I should get a bit angrier?