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Non-English-based programming languages

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Re: Non-English-based programming languages

#191

Post by aasasd »

Phemist wrote: post #187

A somewhat related thing I've had on my mind: I remember at my Dutch university we would get intro to programming courses in Java. We would often discuss things in Dutch, but found it awkward to talk about `null` (the "pointer") and `0` (the integer, which in Dutch is "nul"). In fact, I remember a distinct bug that happened from informal communication of an API. The conversation went (in Dutch): Student 1 - "What doe…

Ackchually, the proper pronunciation for English ‘null’ is supposedly /nʌl/: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/null

Re: Non-English-based programming languages

#192

Post by namelosw »

narag wrote: post #104
malodyets wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

In most programming languages the boolean operation 'or' is actually 'xor'.

But in type system the disjunction concept represents 'either', the concepts are more like how people refer to 'or'.

Re: Non-English-based programming languages

#193

Post by Phemist »

aasasd wrote: post #191
Phemist wrote: post #187

A somewhat related thing I've had on my mind: I remember at my Dutch university we would get intro to programming courses in Java. We would often discuss things in Dutch, but found it awkward to talk about `null` (the "pointer") and `0` (the integer, which in Dutch is "nul"). In fact, I remember a distinct bug that happened from informal communication of an API. The conversation went (in Dutch): Student 1 - "What doe…

Ackchually, the proper pronunciation for English ‘null’ is supposedly /nʌl/: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/null

Interesting, that we gravitated towards a similar pronunciation due to a conflict in the beforementioned terms. It's unfortunate that proper English pronunciation does not always cross the North Sea :P. There are actually plenty of words in English that I have only written and read, and have never heard or spoken out loud... and I consider myself a decent speaker of English.

Re: Non-English-based programming languages

#194

Post by dragonwriter »

namelosw wrote: post #192
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.

In most programming languages the boolean operation 'or' is actually 'xor'. But in type system the disjunction concept represents 'either', the concepts are more like how people refer to 'or'.

> In most programming languages the boolean operation 'or' is actually 'xor'.

I can't think of any where that's true; logical “and” and “or” are usually exactly what they claim to be, and many languages implement both as short-circuiting operators, whereas XOR can't short circuit because you can never know the result without considering both arguments.

Re: Non-English-based programming languages

#195

Post by Phemist »

taejo wrote: post #190
Phemist wrote: post #187

A somewhat related thing I've had on my mind: I remember at my Dutch university we would get intro to programming courses in Java. We would often discuss things in Dutch, but found it awkward to talk about `null` (the "pointer") and `0` (the integer, which in Dutch is "nul"). In fact, I remember a distinct bug that happened from informal communication of an API. The conversation went (in Dutch): Student 1 - "What doe…

> This is the only language I know of that uses None In the ML family the empty alternative of the `Option` type is called `None`; in Haskell corresponding `Maybe` type has `Nothing`.

Cool! Good to know. I don't think None is totally problem free either, as it is easy to confuse with `NaN`. `Nothing` definitely bypasses all the mentioned issues and seems like a better choice.

Re: Non-English-based programming languages

#196

Post by dragonwriter »

narag wrote: post #104
malodyets wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> has or in English a different meaning than in code?

“Or” in English can mean either exclusive-or or inclusive-or (usually it means the latter), and/or is a means to specify inclusive-or without ambiguity (the parallel construct for exclusive-or is “X or Y, but not both”) used mostly in contexts where misconstruction can be exotics to the drafter of the text, such as contracts and formal policy documents.

In code, the meaning is already unambiguous; in all languages I am aware, “or” or the symbol referred to in speech with that name (e.g., “||”) is strictly inclusive, and do there is an exclusive-or operator, it is different.

Re: Non-English-based programming languages

#197

Post by [deleted] »

dmitriid wrote: post #43
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…

Note: I'm not a native speaker. English doesn't have genders and cases [1] so grammatical constructs such as if/then/else, case of, unless etc. suffer much less than when you have gender and case. Oh, god, and plural forms of those. For a Russian speaker using a PL in Russian is constant pain as your brain tries to add all the missing parts to the words: if(count(letters ) > limit ){ words.append(word ) } etc. [1] We…

[deleted]

Re: Non-English-based programming languages

#198

Post by aasasd »

Phemist wrote: post #193
aasasd wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ackchually, the proper pronunciation for English ‘null’ is supposedly /nʌl/: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/null

Interesting, that we gravitated towards a similar pronunciation due to a conflict in the beforementioned terms. It's unfortunate that proper English pronunciation does not always cross the North Sea :P. There are actually plenty of words in English that I have only written and read, and have never heard or spoken out loud... and I consider myself a decent speaker of English.

Oh boy. If you want a bag full of surprises, take up listening to audiobooks in English.

Re: Non-English-based programming languages

#199

Post by Symbiote »

Phemist wrote: post #193
aasasd wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ackchually, the proper pronunciation for English ‘null’ is supposedly /nʌl/: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/null

Interesting, that we gravitated towards a similar pronunciation due to a conflict in the beforementioned terms. It's unfortunate that proper English pronunciation does not always cross the North Sea :P. There are actually plenty of words in English that I have only written and read, and have never heard or spoken out loud... and I consider myself a decent speaker of English.

> There are actually plenty of words in English that I have only written and read, and have never heard or spoken out loud

… and I'm a well-educated native speaker.

English proudly possesses a prodigious panoply¹ of… um… phrase particles.

¹ I have never heard this word spoken.

Re: Non-English-based programming languages

#200

Post by Symbiote »

tempguy9999 wrote: post #20
tanin wrote: post #2

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'.…

Arguably none of these words existed in the modern programming sense 50 years ago. Even 'computer' was origially a person employed for calculating " rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_computer> . I struggle to imagine that thai can't do similar extensions - inheritance maps directly onto the personal concept of ownership down (human) lineages, surely you have that? Serious but weird suggestion, talk t…

>> 'software', 'hardware', 'class', 'inheritance', 'encapsulation', 'abstraction', 'refactoring' in Thai. > > Arguably none of these words existed in the modern programming sense 50 years ago.

They did; that's why they were repurposed in computing.

"Ware" means goods, especially something for sale. Hardware means the wares used in construction: screws, hinges, brackets and so on, or any equipment. Extending that to computer hardware is straightforward.

"Software" is new for computing, by analogy to hardware.

"Inheritance" has the meaning taken from biology or reproduction. "You've inherited your mother's good looks!"

"Encapsulation" means to wrap something in a capsule; online dictionaries say it was first used in 1872, and gives an undated example of a pilot encapsulated in a cockpit. I don't have the subscription to see the 1872 usage.

"Class" means a group of things sharing some characteristic. Remember that the code you wrote is a class definition; "class" has its normal, English meaning.

"Refactor" may be novel in computing, I'm not sure. You could also apply the word to a document.

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