Absolutely terrible. You should spell everything in American English when programming as like it or not the standard in every codebase and programming language going to be this. I am British but coding is not language, and trying to be clever like this is incredibly counterproductive especially in a diverse team. If you want British English to be used why shouldn’t the German on your team be able to use their languag…
BritCSS: Fixes CSS to use non-American English
121–130 of 180 posts
Re: BritCSS: Fixes CSS to use non-American English
#1221. All of this could have been avoided but for the want of some MPs for some colonies. But no. 2. "License: Not Specified" instead of "Licence: Not Specified"
Speaking as a non-native English speaker, I'm not sure how I feel about American imperialism replacing British imperialism in general, but as far as English spelling and phonology goes, god bless America.
Both British and American English spellings are objectively incorrect. The only reason anyone believes them to be correct is that teachers in both countries have joined a cabal to play a mass prank on their pupils. Any second now, they will reveal that it was all just a big joke.
Re: BritCSS: Fixes CSS to use non-American English
#123Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm english, my team is english. We use english spelling throughout. I'm not switching to american spelling to appease americans who aren't reading my code, in the same way as I'm not programming in french either
So you’d advocate that codebases should be written in the locale of the people writing them? What about open source projects, should they be dictated by the first language of the creator in most cases? You presumably can’t use British English for the standard library calls so now you have a mixture of languages which to me is pointless and more about the ego of the people writing things. I’m just in favour of consist…
"So you’d advocate that codebases should be written in the locale of the people writing them?"
That's unavoidable, to some degree. You can be a programmer who doesn't speak English particularly well. You can write code about a domain that lacks English terms (e.g. you're writing code for a government in Norway — there will be words in your code that lack English equivalents).
Why should a team in China spell out everything in English if very few (if any) English speakers will ever see that code, and if a lot of the people on the team don't speak English well? Just because the language has keywords like "if" or "function"?
Re: BritCSS: Fixes CSS to use non-American English
#124Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm english, my team is english. We use english spelling throughout. I'm not switching to american spelling to appease americans who aren't reading my code, in the same way as I'm not programming in french either
So you’d advocate that codebases should be written in the locale of the people writing them? What about open source projects, should they be dictated by the first language of the creator in most cases? You presumably can’t use British English for the standard library calls so now you have a mixture of languages which to me is pointless and more about the ego of the people writing things. I’m just in favour of consist…
TBH most programming languages' alleged "English" is their own weird dialect anyway. Take Ruby's "include?" (should be includes?, and yes I have read the rationale), for example, or the eternal weirdness that is C++ ("deque" ain't no country I've ever heard of). If you're going to fixate on doing the same as the stdlib then you're just laying down rakes in your own path.
Re: BritCSS: Fixes CSS to use non-American English
#125Earlier quoted context omitted.
As a programmer working in the UK I've never been asked to rewrite something into British English. I have been instructed to convert some old codebase to American spellings to "avoid confusion". Probably about 6 times in 20 years of professional programming and usually by some product manager based in San José following an acquisition. This is why the library exists I expect.
I've been dodging requests to "fix" British date formats in published articles to meet US reader expectations for a while now ...
YYYY-MM-DD should aggravate everyone equally, switch to that
Re: BritCSS: Fixes CSS to use non-American English
#126Calling British English (also known as just English) 'non-American English' is like calling an original a 'non-duplicate'. American is basically English with typos, bad grammar, and bad style.
I like and endorse Webster's reforms (-or, -er, -ize). Why write the French way? What have the Normans ever done for us? Apart from the legal system, chivalry, heraldry, and centuries of low-key class warfare.
Re: BritCSS: Fixes CSS to use non-American English
#127Earlier quoted context omitted.
However, that is not the perspective of the creator of BritCSS, who refers to current CSS property names as "bastardised" spellings.
S/he's wrong, simple as that. "The particular spatio-temporal version of speech that I grew up with is correct, and all others are bastardised" is not a defensible or - frankly - interesting position. Chaucer would find virtually all modern English to be debased; Bede would wince at Chaucer's English; and so on, forever. Nothing fruitful comes from cultivating arrogance towards the language of others. It is just as m…
I find it ironic that you're making an argument about how language evolves in the same sentence that you insist on an awkward "s/he" instead of just using a singular "they" (or if you're Richard Stallman, whatever neopronoun he fancies, I forgot what it is)
Re: BritCSS: Fixes CSS to use non-American English
#128Earlier quoted context omitted.
Spelling is in every case a cultural artefact, even for languages more phonetic than English. Such an orthography still needs to make choices about what distinctions to reflect in writing (e.g. should the orthography reflect regular and predictable allophony? voicing assimilation? final obstruent devoicing?) and there's no correct answer to this, there are only various trade-offs. Colos to color was indeed part of a…
The spelling of a word is one thing, the writing system of a language is another thing. Of course, the writing system of each language is a cultural artefact, which differs from the writing systems of other languages for various historical reasons. On the other hand, for most languages the spelling of a word is determined by uniform rules, which are the same for most words, with the possible exception of a small numb…
How are spelling rules anything other than a cultural artefact? They are invented by a person or group of people and then agreed upon and implemented by a larger group. Then the rules are obeyed or not on a case by case basis by an even larger group of people. Arguably language itself is not a cultural artefact. But distinctions between languages and all attempts to describe or prescribe their use are.
Re: BritCSS: Fixes CSS to use non-American English
#129The British Empire ruined the English language.
Re: BritCSS: Fixes CSS to use non-American English
#130Obliged to point out that "color" is how it's spelled in Latin, Old French, and therefore post-Norman English, that the superfluous "u" was added later by the English aristocracy because they were jealous of how fancy the newly-respelled French looked.
However I think that when Americans brought it back they missed opportunity to get rid of 'c' and put 'k' there instead. Is 'c' even used in English language? It usually is just 'k' or 's'.
Usually, but not always. Here you go—'cinch'. Could replace the first 'c' with s, but the second instance would be a little more difficult, as 'sh' has a softer pronunciation than 'ch' here, which itself is not as hard as 'j' (emoji) or 'ge' (rage).