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Show HN: Programming in non-English languages

thesage21.github.io

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Re: Show HN: Programming in non-English languages

#3

A few examples (perhaps HelloWord and Fibonacci) in other languages would be nice. From an informal statistic I propose German and French. (and I'd like to add Spanish, because I speak Spanish.)

I added a sample example file and an example maker. Thank you for the feedback.

Re: Show HN: Programming in non-English languages

#4
post #3

A few examples (perhaps HelloWord and Fibonacci) in other languages would be nice. From an informal statistic I propose German and French. (and I'd like to add Spanish, because I speak Spanish.)

I added a sample example file and an example maker. Thank you for the feedback.

It would be good to have those examples also on the linked page, that presents the project, and not only buried in a folder, contained in the repo, stored on github.

Re: Show HN: Programming in non-English languages

#6
This is pretty neat. I've not taken a close look at the implementation but I'll definitely do that (if it isn't a whole lot of effort could you please describe/document the design and approach taken ?)

I've had thoughts about solving this problem previously but never acted on it. My thoughts on this however were along the lines of providing the ability to re-define the keywords and builtins as part of the interpreter itself in such a way that even the prompt could accept non-english input.

Thinking about this is natural when one is Indian[1] and ends up working with some really talented people who have weak English skills simply because their primary education was conducted entirely in a non-English medium.

A lot of words used to express programming ideas are difficult for non-native English speakers to remember even if the ideas themselves are not (think abstraction, encapsulation, introspection, reentrant, idempotent ...etc) and the effort required to remember and use them correctly when communicating with other devs is higher (IMHO) for non-native English developers. Of course this is non an India specific issue, and of course English is the lingua franca of technology but that shouldn't be the barrier to entry for learning programming.

kudos on the effort once again !

[1] one country, and a multitude (22 according to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_languages_by_number_of_... ) of 'official languages'

Re: Show HN: Programming in non-English languages

#8
post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I added a sample example file and an example maker. Thank you for the feedback.

It would be good to have those examples also on the linked page, that presents the project, and not only buried in a folder, contained in the repo, stored on github.

My mistake, corrected. Thank you.

Re: Show HN: Programming in non-English languages

#9

I'm not native English speaker, but I wish people would just accept that English is Latin of computers. I still have to come to servers installed in German or French and guess by memory where stuff are.

It is really horrible when local civil servants start to invent translations for English words, which did not mean anything computer-related to begin with. Like Spool and Cache and Cookie. Why cant browser's Cookie be just Cookie, it is easy to vocalize in any languiage. Why they want to translate Cookie into local bakery term? It does not raise level of comprehension any.

Re: Show HN: Programming in non-English languages

#10
My database publishing system's programming language is both English and German. While programmers usually prefer the English interface, a rather large percentage of my users prefer the German one. (en: https://speedata.github.io/publisher/manual/index.html, de: https://speedata.github.io/publisher/manual/index-de.html)

There is also for example ConTeXt (http://wiki.contextgarden.net) - a typesetting language similar to LaTeX, which supports commands in English, Dutch and German.

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