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قلب: a non-ASCII programming language written in Arabic

nas.sr

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Re: قلب: a non-ASCII programming language written in Arabic

#331

Post by Nasrudith »

One thing that surprised me about non-English programming was that they didn't use some style subsitution of keywords with programming languages for their compilers. It seems like it would be a simpler solution even with tokenization potentially forcing some awkward word choices. Even considering the annoying bugs which could crop up with that I would have thought it would have been a thing. Apparently most just work with "the magic strings" or know enough English already.

That would be far more helpful than pretentious finger waggling at wide masses of people for not taking vastly unreasonable steps from the start. All from someone privledged enough to be paid or spend unpaid time for an ostentatious show project like this - in sharp contrast to how the actual non-English progammers act - adapting or rolling their own for their purposes.

The toxic attitude on the website negates any outreach of even a "interesting to see parralel evolved approaches" sense.

The 'not even trying to solve any problems just blame' is a personal pet peeve of mine.

Re: قلب: a non-ASCII programming language written in Arabic

#332

Post by amenod »

cyborgx7 wrote: post #212
amenod wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

TBH, I didn't get the joke until I read your comment. A small "/s" at the end wouldn't hurt.

Pointing out it was indeed a joke, was part of the reason I wrote the comment in the first place.

Just to be clear - I think your parent should have put '/s' at the end, not you. :)

Re: قلب: a non-ASCII programming language written in Arabic

#334

Post by Tepix »

coldtea wrote: post #152

> Code is written entirely in Arabic, highlighting cultural biases of computer science and challenging the assumptions we make about programming. There are lots of "cultural biases in computer science" -- in UI, neural network training, encodings, terms of service, etc. Of all of them, this is the least helpful, and the least important. It's like doing math in local notation, or translating latin/greek terms doctors…

Others have already commented that air traffic controllers use the same languages for reasons not applicable to programming.

> I'm no native english speaker

Does your native language use the latin alphabet? Are you familiar with the arabic alphabet? If not, why do you think you are qualified to judge that "this is the least helpful, and the least important"?

Re: قلب: a non-ASCII programming language written in Arabic

#335

Post by np_tedious »

tim333 wrote: post #215
EugeneOZ wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't need to know English to write code. I wrote my first QBasic and Visual Basic programs (one of them was "photo editor") when only foreign language I knew was German (my native is Russian).

Or at least just a few words I guess - if, for, while etc.

It's a headstart for sure, but English speakers do have to learn those reserved words and control structures in each language. The difference is we have the benefit of grounding them in their similar, but not identical, ordinary meanings

The bigger deal is standard lib classes and functions. An English speaker can guess for the names of things they want whereas a nonspeaker would have to remember them explicitly

Re: قلب: a non-ASCII programming language written in Arabic

#336

Post by usrusr »

Digit-Al wrote: post #286
EugeneOZ wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't need to know English to write code. I wrote my first QBasic and Visual Basic programs (one of them was "photo editor") when only foreign language I knew was German (my native is Russian).

I'm really curious now. If you don't mind me asking, how did you learn the meanings of the keywords when they were in a language you didn't understand? Did you have to learn to translate "for", "while", etc into Russian equivalents?

Same way you learn to use the ternary operator in c-ish languages? All the binary operators that have no equivalent in daily life?

Re: قلب: a non-ASCII programming language written in Arabic

#337

Post by matz1 »

nightnight wrote: post #81
tsanummy wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If this is an ironic post, hats off to you.

Dear tsanummy, help us to find the irony in my post or better the message in your post. So, what's your point? I'd love to know what you are talking about. Just to give another example: Imagine all countries in the world had the same language and people could move freely: You had massive and full competition between all nations/cities/economies for the best people and competition is good. Nobody is locked-in because…

If suddenly all countries had the same language i bet overtime, they will change and gradually evolve into multiple language.

Re: قلب: a non-ASCII programming language written in Arabic

#338

Post by tacone »

As a side note I am a big fan of non-asci command line aliases. I have my keyboard set with the no dead keys layout, so pressing AltGr + [shift?] + letter will lead to weird stuff like ÐıØΩ~˛. The great part of it its being able to have single letter commands that won't collide with anything installed on the machine. For example I have » as an alias to: [ | xargs -n1 -d "\n" ] and I have a zsh function called Ð that let's me run commands inside a docker-compose(d) container.

For example:

ls -1 | grep backup » rm

Re: قلب: a non-ASCII programming language written in Arabic

#339

Post by warp »

skrebbel wrote: post #328
amenod wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

TBH, I didn't get the joke until I read your comment. A small "/s" at the end wouldn't hurt.

To be frank, "/s" would have totally ruined it for everyone else. I'm assuming that you simply didn't read past the first paragraph? (That's fine, I bet we all do that way too often here) I mean, I have a hard time believing that you really can't tell that a post that states that everybody uses FORTRAN isn't serious. I care because HN has a way of ruining satire and sarcasm this way. These are only the delightful sty…

I'm sad to admit I downvoted after the first paragraph. I was glad HN let me undo that after I read the second :)

(also, hey skrebbel! :)

Re: قلب: a non-ASCII programming language written in Arabic

#340

Post by fastball »

guggle wrote: post #89
fastball wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eh, I think you're forgetting how much english grammar exists in stdlibs. `string.toUppercase()` is super intuitive for an english speaker, but is nonsense that needs to be memorized for someone that can't speak english.

That's my point: everyone has to learn a bit of english, and that's good. It's good for everyone. It's a personal annoyance at first but with a bit of effort you turn it into a personal skill which then benefits to everyone. Community > Individual

I'm not sure how an arabic speaker having to learn english is better than you having to learn arabic.
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