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Non-English-based programming languages

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Re: Non-English-based programming languages

#121

Post by thaumasiotes »

pasabagi wrote: post #38
aasasd wrote: post #24

Seeing a programming language in your native language after working with English ones, you discover that it looks and sounds pretty ridiculous. My belief is that the native language is ingrained on a low level in the brain, so it's decoded ‘in the hardware’ and directly invokes meanings and associations, whereas a second language goes through at least some level of conscious processing. The very same way, I'm physica…

I remember the english associations of programming words being pretty confusing, to be honest. Generic, for instance, means a standard or non-descript object. Abstract, for another, means something without concrete existence. Static means something that doesn't move, or electrostatic charge. Void is a pretty archaic/unusual word for a space. All these things are a little bit like how they are used in programming lang…

> Isn't lower case more legible?

No, it isn't.

Re: Non-English-based programming languages

#122

Post by thaumasiotes »

pasabagi wrote: post #61
jacobolus wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Take it up with Émile Baudot? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baudot_code

I feel when something becomes so ubiquitous, even though it's obviously inferior, it takes a bit more push than one patent - especially if the patent is mainly about encoding, and barely incidentally about typography. And I don't think it's the case that nobody knew capitals were hard on the eyes. The whole reason why lower case letters exist is because roman allcapswithnospaces are horrible.

> And I don't think it's the case that nobody knew capitals were hard on the eyes. The whole reason why lower case letters exist is because roman allcapswithnospaces are horrible.

As I responded to you elsewhere, the idea that capitals are hard on the eyes is just a myth. All caps with no spaces is bad, but that's because of the missing spaces.

Re: Non-English-based programming languages

#123

Post by thaumasiotes »

TheGRS wrote: post #74
aasasd wrote: post #24

Seeing a programming language in your native language after working with English ones, you discover that it looks and sounds pretty ridiculous. My belief is that the native language is ingrained on a low level in the brain, so it's decoded ‘in the hardware’ and directly invokes meanings and associations, whereas a second language goes through at least some level of conscious processing. The very same way, I'm physica…

I can't imagine programming with ESL and having to deal with code where some english speaker thought they were super clever and named various classes and variables after things that are super referential or punny. I see a lot of classes at my current job named after 80s TV shows or inside jokes. Maybe having ESL would make that type of thing easier to deal with actually since it drives me up the wall.

Programming as an English speaker in code mainly written by foreigners is strange too. Misspelling words doesn't matter to them. Having several classes using the same name template ("GhostFactory" / "GhoulFactory" / "ZombieFactory") is fine... and it's also fine if one of them happens to be spelled differently ("PumpkinFatcory"). They're just arbitrary letter sequences that you type via autocomplete.

Re: Non-English-based programming languages

#124

Post by empath75 »

aasasd wrote: post #72
totalperspectiv wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perl is so cool from a linguistic standpoint. I wish there were more written about that aspect of it. Also Conway is amazing.

I mean: > While in graduate school at the University of California, Berkeley, Larry Wall and his wife were studying linguistics with the intention of finding an unwritten language, perhaps in Africa, and creating a writing system for it. They would then use this new writing system to translate various texts into the language, among them the Bible. And Perl was explicitly designed with a slant towards natural-language…

For a linguist, he made a horrifically unreadable language.

Re: Non-English-based programming languages

#125

Post by outlace »

malodyets wrote: post #35
aasasd wrote: post #24

Seeing a programming language in your native language after working with English ones, you discover that it looks and sounds pretty ridiculous. My belief is that the native language is ingrained on a low level in the brain, so it's decoded ‘in the hardware’ and directly invokes meanings and associations, whereas a second language goes through at least some level of conscious processing. The very same way, I'm physica…

Programming uses the same words as regular English, but it is a completely different linguistic register, so there is never any conflict. It’s like working in any field with its own jargon — you use the meaning that is relevant to the context. In linguistics this is called the Relevance theory of meaning and interpretion, which explains why we do this contextual interpretation easily and mostly without thinking about…

Yep. Virtually no word has a concrete meaning without a context. For example the word “guys” which may mean a group of males or just a generic collection of people irrespective of gender depending on the context in which it is used.

Re: Non-English-based programming languages

#126

Post by tanilama »

pessimizer wrote: post #57
aasasd wrote: post #24

Seeing a programming language in your native language after working with English ones, you discover that it looks and sounds pretty ridiculous. My belief is that the native language is ingrained on a low level in the brain, so it's decoded ‘in the hardware’ and directly invokes meanings and associations, whereas a second language goes through at least some level of conscious processing. The very same way, I'm physica…

"That Japanese Man Yuta" on youtube mentioned on one of his videos that Japanese-y/Chinese-y roman alphabet fonts completely break his brain when he sees them, and he can't see them as English, just horrible nonsense.

Well can confirm. I prefer pure English than romanization pinyin ANY time.

Pinyin for Chinese isn't self contained, you have to guess what really means. If I saw pinyin code, unless it is absolutely necessary, like not ambiguous and no proper English translation, it won't pass CR if I am reviewing it.

Re: Non-English-based programming languages

#128

Post by skissane »

Thorrez wrote: post #105
narag wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By the way... has or in English a different meaning than in code? I cringe every time I hear the and/or thing translated to Spanish, usually several times in a row. Not sure if it's the usual mistranslation or it's also idiotic in the original text.

Yes, "or" in English often is more similar to xor in code. For example if someone says "I want pizza or a burger", that person probably does not want both pizza and a burger for the same meal, whereas in programming an equivalent expression would be satisfied if both are true simultaneously. But "or" in English doesn't always mean xor in code. Sometimes it is the same as or in code.

English "or" is ambiguous between inclusive and exclusive meanings. Most of the time, the intended meaning is inferred based on context, but one can make it explicit by using phrases such as "but not both", "exactly one of", etc.

There exist languages which lack this ambiguity. Latin has two different words for "or" – "vel" (inclusive) and "aut" (exclusive).

Re: Non-English-based programming languages

#129

Post by ajuc »

School-Cotton wrote: post #96
ajuc wrote: post #41

I've seen version of LOGO with all instructions translated into Polish used for education in 80s/90s. It was pretty OK but it wasn't really based on Polish, it wasn't using any features of Polish language, just translated the English commands to make it slightly easier for the kids. To make a programming language based on Polish that captures the core of the language would be pretty strange - variable names would nee…

Similarly though, I don't think any programming language is really "based on English" or "captures the core of the [English] language", in any meaningful way. So isn't the situation basically the same between English and Polish? Just like Polish noun cases, I don't see how any of the interesting distinctive features of English are captured by programming languages.

Well English is analytic language, so the syntax of if, while, and positional arguments of functions reflect that.

Re: Non-English-based programming languages

#130

Post by kortilla »

Latty wrote: post #115
tanin wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're right. Native English speakers must have some sort of hard time with English words being repurposed. I remember at work a colleague asked "how do I kill chubby slave?", which didn't sound strange at the time, since Chubby was an authentication system (IIRC). But, when thinking about it, that's probably a very offensive sentence in English.

There has been a move recently away from the "master/slave" analogy in a lot of projects for a number of reasons including that one, which personally I think is a sensible choice. Of course, you get plenty of people saying that we should all not care about the origin or other meanings of words in programming, and yet they tend to care deeply about maintaining the status-quo.

>and yet they tend to care deeply about maintaining the status-quo.

Because changing is more work than not. It shouldn’t be a surprise when people get upset because you want to change fundamental terminology in some software’s architecture because a group is triggered by the originally chosen words.

E.g. Somehow master and slave are more offensive than killing parents and leaving orphans?

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