Non-English-based programming languages • Hacker News Board

Re: Non-English-based programming languages

#211

Post by tempguy9999 » Mon, Jul 01, 2019, 3:48 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…

Ok, let me put it another way. Instead of 50 years ago (1970), when computers were starting to be publicly available along with this developing terminology, let's say it was 70 years ago, so 1950.

Consider that a correction on what I originally wrote.

Now take a time-machine back to then and meet with The Man On The Clapham Omnibus, a term used in english legal law to denoye the everyman, the utter mr. average. Use those terms on him:

'software'?

(blinks)

'hardware'?

"ah yes, as purchased at the ironmonger's"

'class'

"oh yes, like in prep school?"

err, no.

"well then like the labourers and shipmen, and the aristocracy? That kind of class I take it"

etc. etc. The terms are easy to transmute but it hadn't happened then. Agreed about encapsulation, abstraction, refactoring etc though.

Disagree with me at your peril, I got downvote rights yesterday - so does one feel luck, punk?

Well, does one?

:)

Re: Non-English-based programming languages

#212

Post by ken » Mon, Jul 01, 2019, 4:07 PM UTC

Iv wrote: post #143

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…

French here, that's my experience as well. I want to emphasize that the huge majority of the non-english native programmers I know are pretty opposed to translating programming languages. However, my experience teaching Japaneses has been that what is crucial if you want to make a programming language accessible to different nationalities is to translate error messages correctly. Learning IF, FOR, RETURN is not hard.…

> Learning IF, FOR, RETURN is not hard. There are 20 words max to learn.

That was true in the old days with C or Pascal, but it's not much the case any more. Modern C++ has about 100 keywords [1]. Even Swift (Apple: "easy to learn") has about 100 reserved words.

[1]: https://en.cppreference.com/w/cpp/keyword [2]: https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-reserved-Swift-keywords

Re: Non-English-based programming languages

#213

Post by watersb » Mon, Jul 01, 2019, 4:10 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…

Native English speaker, very interested because I find my brain caught when I hear background noise in other (human) languages.

These days, I am hearing more Russian and Dutch. Along with Spanish, German and Swedish, impossible for me to speak but hovering at the edge of understanding, my brain cannot ignore when I hear them.

Programming languages, after 40 years of it I'm not aware of any particular effect of the English words. With "Wolfram Language", for instance, I think it would help if the words were based on Esperanto or Swahili, as I can never anticipate the magic invocations needed.

Language is weird.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolfram_Language

Re: Non-English-based programming languages

#214

Post by ken » Mon, Jul 01, 2019, 4:15 PM UTC

needle0 wrote: post #176

qiqitori wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I speak English natively and Japanese fluently, and in my experience error messages (and other messages) that were translated into Japanese are often of rather questionable quality. But you're right, people who don't speak English very well (and aren't too experienced) often don't even notice non-fatal errors. I still think that showing translated error messages isn't very good. 1) Messages are often translated poorl…

I don't quite get the reasoning where you talk about the quality of Japanese error messages, then talk about making it even harder to decipher. Sure you can compress meaning into short strings of kanji, but readability definitely takes a hit when you do that, even to a native speaker. It's not like we're displaying this on paper; there could be better ways to show errors to non-English speakers, eg. more descriptive…

> Japanese is one of the languages where technical information written in the language is fairly abundant

At least with respect to error messages, that has not been my experience. I've almost never had success googling Japanese error messages. That (and the insanity with remembering how to get java to display English error messages, since it doesn't respect LANG/LC_ALL) is 100% the reason why I gave up on using Japanese on my development system.

Re: Non-English-based programming languages

#215

Post by Symbiote » Mon, Jul 01, 2019, 4:56 PM UTC

tempguy9999 wrote: post #211

Symbiote wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> '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…

Ok, let me put it another way. Instead of 50 years ago (1970), when computers were starting to be publicly available along with this developing terminology, let's say it was 70 years ago, so 1950. Consider that a correction on what I originally wrote. Now take a time-machine back to then and meet with The Man On The Clapham Omnibus, a term used in english legal law to denoye the everyman, the utter mr. average. Use t…

I don't think the man on the Clapham omnibus would have trouble understanding "hardware" to mean tools, fittings or fixtures used for a particular trade or purpose. That's what the word has meant for over 500 years.

"Class" — yes, like in school, or social class. The thing in common in 1950 might be "all boys, all age 13-14, all learning chemistry". A Java EarlyTeenChemistryBoy. (Isn't the first example when learning OO programming something like the class Student, a subclass of Person

In any case, my lawyer will argue we don't want the man on the Clapham omnibus, but the better-educated man in the first-class carriage of the 8:15 express to Birmingham.

(You will find you can't downvote this reply, and I think it's poor etiquette to pick some other random comment of mine and downvote that, although that does happen.)

Re: Non-English-based programming languages

#216

Post by tempguy9999 » Mon, Jul 01, 2019, 5:10 PM UTC

Symbiote wrote: post #215

tempguy9999 wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, let me put it another way. Instead of 50 years ago (1970), when computers were starting to be publicly available along with this developing terminology, let's say it was 70 years ago, so 1950. Consider that a correction on what I originally wrote. Now take a time-machine back to then and meet with The Man On The Clapham Omnibus, a term used in english legal law to denoye the everyman, the utter mr. average. Use t…

I don't think the man on the Clapham omnibus would have trouble understanding "hardware" to mean tools, fittings or fixtures used for a particular trade or purpose. That's what the word has meant for over 500 years. "Class" — yes , like in school, or social class. The thing in common in 1950 might be "all boys, all age 13-14, all learning chemistry". A Java EarlyTeenChemistryBoy. (Isn't the first example when learnin…

Let's agree to agree. Now, 1) why can't I downvote your answer? and 2) I thought the smiley made it clear I had no intention of doing so - I replied to your point because it was a good one. The signoff was a bit of fun. I made that as clear as I could.

Re: Non-English-based programming languages

#217

Post by daveslash » Mon, Jul 01, 2019, 5:50 PM UTC

inopinatus wrote: post #165

hombre_fatal wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Our friend @inopinatus was certainly making that joke.

Not sure what you mean. In this example, I’m just pitching a tent.

During nice weather, I usually like to open the fly.

Re: Non-English-based programming languages

#218

Post by gabordemooij » Mon, Jul 01, 2019, 7:21 PM UTC

Shameless plug here, but I am creating a programming language that tries to let everyone code in their native language and also 'translates': https://citrine-lang.org/ Might be interesting for people reading this topic. Nobody uses it of course but I like to work on it. ;-)

Re: Non-English-based programming languages

#219

Post by Kalium » Mon, Jul 01, 2019, 10:14 PM UTC

cmroanirgo wrote: post #151

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 Let us be clear that this is US English and not British, but I agree with your sentiment: that the keywords are more a linguistic jargon than anything. Although the main topic here is about other languages, there are also nuances within the two main streams of English that it's also a little wierd sometimes. For me, I spell color with a U: ie. colour , but when cod…

I think what this question exposes is that the primary consumers of code are humans. Code is only incidentally written for computers.

So really, this is exactly the same problem human language exists to solve. There's no getting away from it.

Re: Non-English-based programming languages

#220

Post by zzo38computer » Mon, Jul 01, 2019, 10:18 PM UTC

In computer programming I will use American language, even if the documentation is Canadian (I am Canadian, so I write Canadian documentation even though the commands in the program itself will be American).

However, you can also have programming languages with abbreviated keywords or no keywords, which is also sometimes suitable. If there are keywords, I will always do it in American.

(And when writing music, I will write all of the notation in Italian, even though I do not speak Italian. If I don't know the Italian word for something, I will ask someone who does know, and write that.)