131–140 of 228 posts
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I worked with a German version of VBA for a little while. MS soon gave up on this but it was a really weird experience.
I thought VBA was always in english (syntax & APIs). Only excel formulas are displayed translated in the regular Excel UI.
I used to think about this when I was a student. I could totally make a programming language in Thai. Surprisingly, one of the main issues that I thought of was a cultural one. Thais culturally don't use a single word to encapsulate complex meaning. We use a combination of words to capture that kind of meaning. Just to give an example: a taxi driver is 'human-drives-taxi' in Thai. A barber is 'tradeperson-cuts-hair'.…
Back in the 80's, when C++ first became a thing, we tried to find Japanese words for the concepts. Destructors became "Death Tractors", which I always thought was awesome.
[1] https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E3%83%87%E3%82%B9%E3%83%88%E3...
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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.
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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.
I believe the result is that lower-case words are easier to read at sufficiently close distance but legibility drops off sooner as distance increases. I also believe that while upper-case words may be less legible, individual letters are more legible as upper-case, and therefore upper-case words may be easier for very inexperienced readers who haven’t learned words by shape and still piece them together by letter.
2) If you use a non-English language you can’t make good use of existing code out there so any gains are none or negative
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> Isn't lower case more legible? No, it isn't.
Lower-case words have a wider variety of shape, as so many letters have markings extending above and below the horizontal lines that bound the letter o. UPPER-CASE WORDS ARE BASICALLY ALL RECTANGLES OF VARYING WIDTH AND FIXED HEIGHT. BUT THEY USE MUCH LESS WHITESPACE, WHICH IS WHAT LOWER-CASE WORDS USE TO CARVE OUT SHAPE. I believe the result is that lower-case words are easier to read at sufficiently close distance…
"The result" is that if you pull people off the street and ask them to read capitalized or lower-case text, they're slower at reading the capitalized text. People like pasabagi want to leap to the conclusion that that means reading capitalized text is harder. That conclusion is unjustified; the rest of the result is that the difference in reading speed disappears after a small amount of practice. Lowercase text is more common. But obviously that can't justify the choice of a writing system; any writing system will be common if it's in common use.
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That's a good point: "never any conflict" describes the final state rather than the growth process. When I was a younger programmer (as in, during the first few years), I discovered that assuming boolean / formal logic meanings for {if, or, else, and} in communication with my spouse (art + sales, and very smart, though not a programmer or trained in symbolic logic) resulted in, shall we say ... miscommunication. So I…
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.
"Do you want /pizza or a \burger\?" = XOR
"Do you want /pizza or a /burger/? = OR (as in programming)
It can make a good (though well-worn) joke to answer the XOR version with "Yes."
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I worked with a German version of VBA for a little while. MS soon gave up on this but it was a really weird experience.
I thought VBA was always in english (syntax & APIs). Only excel formulas are displayed translated in the regular Excel UI.
VBA on this machine has English keywords (Sub/Dim/If/While), but Swedish application APIs (search in Word is Sök for instance). Screenshot of one of the sample macros: https://i.imgur.com/vDWQcWk.png
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As a native-English speaker, when I compare e.g. python's "x and not y" to a more formulaic "x && !y", it really doesn't seem to make much of a difference. I'm curious if you were using a syntax highlighter, that may affect your experience.
On the other hand, python gives us 'x is not y' which is equivalent to 'not(x is y)' and not 'x is (not y)'. Which can surprise even native English speakers
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It's not, it's just fun to think about. Likewise french dominance of culinary terms, etc.. What I find more interesting is actually how removed from spoken English most programming language reserved words are. Taking C and derivatives: "if" is pretty close, and "while" captures the meaning of the word but not its typical usage. The meaning of "return" is correct, but jargon (yes, you're "going back" to where you were…
"int" doesn't really make sense from a mathematical perspective, since ints in e.g. C are a finite set that is not closed under addition or multiplication. So I think it's actually a good example of your broader point, that the meaning of English words as programming keywords is often very different from their meaning in other contexts.
The discussion was about programming languages and English. What on earth is this about?
You're actually compounding the issue here, by invoking jargon from a different field. That's true of the definition of integers you'll find in college level math textbooks, but the word "integer" as understood by normal people (even computer programmers) means "whole number", which is why the type is named that way.
