Non-English-based programming languages • Hacker News Board

Re: Non-English-based programming languages

#201

Post by TallGuyShort » Mon, Jul 01, 2019, 1:37 PM UTC

majewsky wrote: post #81

malodyets wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Programming uses the same words as regular English, but it is a completely different linguistic register, so there is never any conflict. Moreover, when you cross over those jargon terms into their regular meaning, hilarity ensues. For example, you can easily prove that oaks are infinitely tall in winter. Start by observing that in winter, oaks don't have leaves. Then consider the graph-theory definition of "tree"…

There's the old joke about the programmer who was told to go to the store for bread, and while they were there, to get eggs. Still at the store, getting eggs.

Re: Non-English-based programming languages

#202

Post by Phemist » Mon, Jul 01, 2019, 1:38 PM UTC

Symbiote wrote: post #199

Phemist wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Hah, even simple words can be confusing. My English friends seem to end the word `idea` with a, to my ears, clearly audible `r`, but look at me funny when I mention it to them. Whereas my American friends seem to pronounce it in a more straightforward way..

I also love listening to people speak the "pronunciation poem" out loud. It's very interesting to hear how the pronunciation of each second word is changed, just to make it rhyme with the first (mispronounced) word.

https://www.learnenglish.de/pronunciation/pronunciationpoem....

Re: Non-English-based programming languages

#203

Post by geocar » Mon, Jul 01, 2019, 1:41 PM UTC

a-saleh wrote: post #46

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'.…

Maybe look at a different programming paradigm then? :) I remember trying to learn APL and then watching https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v7Mt0GYHU9A and was amused that there is this world where programming is just symbols :D So maybe look at i.e. something apl-like, or maybe ml or haskell or erlang, where so many things you can do with functions and composing them, or even Prolog, where everything could be thought o…

APL is great.

If you haven't seen them, the late John Scholes did a number of absolutely beautiful demonstrations programming in APL[1], [2], [3].

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DsZdfnlh_d0

[2]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DmT80OseAGs

[3]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a9xAKttWgP4

Re: Non-English-based programming languages

#204

Post by TallGuyShort » Mon, Jul 01, 2019, 1:42 PM UTC

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…

One thing that's felt weird to me is Mockito & friends, and some badly-implemented builder APIs. They're trying to read like natural language, but when the order matters and it's unclear what the order is really supposed to be, the natural language metaphor breaks down and you're better off having it made clear what 'parts of speech' each call is and what the required order is.

I would imagine stuff like that makes a language harder to translate because instead of words, you now have an ordering that might not work. I was surprised to see so few languages on that list where it was essentially a direct keyword translation. There's very little English in C-like languages until you actually start naming everything in the libraries.

Re: Non-English-based programming languages

#205

Post by geocar » Mon, Jul 01, 2019, 1:43 PM UTC

ivanhoe wrote: post #85

One really annoying thing about using an English-based UTF8-capable programming language with some types of non-English content (e.g. if it's in Serbian) is that you have to switch between keyboard layouts constantly. Sooner or later you end up forgetting to switch back and you start writing your code in say, Cyrillic. And let me tell you, Cyrillic letter A looks exactly the same as Latin alphabet letter A, but will…

Consider configuring your editor to highlight characters above 127.

Re: Non-English-based programming languages

#206

Post by thaumasiotes » Mon, Jul 01, 2019, 1:49 PM UTC

aasasd wrote: post #189

thaumasiotes wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I second the neighbor's request for references https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/typography/develop/word-rec... > since your claim goes against the accepted ‘wisdom.’ This is overly generous as a description of a collection of myths that have been known false for decades. > Note also that your claims don't actually refute pasabagi's original conclusion. If lowercase text is easier to read because of its ubiquity, th…

> if we ignore your advice and use capitalized text, capitalized text will be common enough that the advantage of lowercase text disappears I see you're talking about some alternative universe where you convince significant portion of publishers (if not a majority) to switch to uppercase. The practical question is, did teletype or early programming languages or road signs flip us over to that universe? Doesn't seem s…

If we ignore your advice and use capitalized text only for programming in, while books are still published in mostly lowercase, capitals will be so common for programmers that lowercase text will have no advantage over capitalized text.

The styles don't compete with each other for space in your mind. It's just a question of whether you're used to them.

Re: Non-English-based programming languages

#207

Post by rootbear » Mon, Jul 01, 2019, 2:39 PM UTC

tanin wrote: post #48

WalterBright wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

From your 'death tractors' example, now I understand why people are debating changing 'master-slaves' to 'leader-followers'. Thais wouldn't want to call their machines (or anything or anyone) 'slave' with serious tone. It sounds offensive. Thinking about it, native English speakers might have internal struggle about many programming words. As a non-native english speaker, rude/strange/crude/offensive words don't real…

I remember many years ago reading about a user being offended by a command named "abort".

Re: Non-English-based programming languages

#208

Post by School-Cotton » Mon, Jul 01, 2019, 3:11 PM UTC

Swizec wrote: post #26

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…

Seeing anything in computers using my native language feels wrong. I think it’s because I learned how to use computers before I learned English well. For example I learned that to print a line in Pascal you use writeln() at 12 or so. It didn’t occur to me until 10+ years later that writeln is shorthand for “write line”. To me it’s just a symbol with no meaning outside that particular context.

I'm a native English speaker, and so the reason for names like "if", "while", etc. were clear to me when learning. On the other hand, your experience learning programming was similar to mine learning to use a Unix-like OS. Although I do know their etymology as a bit of useless trivia, for the most part "cat", "grep", "vi", "diff", "sed", "dd", "df", "tar", and so on are just arbitrary symbols to me.

Re: Non-English-based programming languages

#209

Post by School-Cotton » Mon, Jul 01, 2019, 3:24 PM UTC

Symbiote wrote: post #200

tempguy9999 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 c…

The OED has citations for "encapsulation" (including variant spellings) going back to 1860:

    1860   F. W. Farrar Ess. Origin Lang. viii. 172   Every subordinate clause being inserted in the main one by a species of incapsulation.

Re: Non-English-based programming languages

#210

Post by vinayms » Mon, Jul 01, 2019, 3:29 PM UTC

Until we program in natural language, I don't see why we must even bother with this. Its fun but useless. For programming as it is today, its just a bunch of English words that we have to learn. We can always comment and document in out native languages if need be. I say this as an Indian, so obviously not English native speaker. (To preempt the "colonial benefit of English" retort, I would say I would say the same thing had USSR won the cold war and everything had to programmed in Russian in Cyrillic. We just had to learn a few words even then, assuming Soviet tech hadn't made NL based programming a reality.)