There was, of course, PHP's notorious Hebrew error message T_PAAMAYIM_NEKUDOTAYIM:
https://yvoloshin.github.io/php/2018/01/20/why-does-php-spea...
Non-English-based programming languages
71–80 of 228 posts
Re: Non-English-based programming languages
#72Perl in Latin: https://metacpan.org/pod/Lingua::Romana::Perligata
Perl is so cool from a linguistic standpoint. I wish there were more written about that aspect of it. Also Conway is amazing.
I mean:
> While in graduate school at the University of California, Berkeley, Larry Wall and his wife were studying linguistics with the intention of finding an unwritten language, perhaps in Africa, and creating a writing system for it. They would then use this new writing system to translate various texts into the language, among them the Bible.
And Perl was explicitly designed with a slant towards natural-language traits. Wall has said that he didn't know as much about creating programming languages, and that this likely affected Perl. So he might've written about the linguistic aspects instead.
> Wall's training as a linguist is apparent in his books, interviews, and lectures. He often compares Perl to a natural language and explains his decisions in Perl's design with linguistic rationale. He also often uses linguistic terms for Perl language constructs, so instead of traditional terms such as "variable", "function", and "accessor" he sometimes says "noun", "verb", and "topicalizer".
Re: Non-English-based programming languages
#73Wasn't it possible to programm in different languages in VB/A? At least some co-workers told me so. Something about VB in German.
Yep, VBA had localized keywords. The standard functions still were named in English though, so the weirdness didn't even buy significant localization.
Almost 20 years ago I wrote some Excel macros on an even then ancient Windows 3.1 computer with German Excel. I tried for Hungarian notation (as I said, almost 20 years ago) and used d for date. So the end date of some range was dEnde. D is also the first letter of Datei, which is German for file. So when I brought the Document to the boss's newer computer the program got translated but all the variables still had German names except for dEnde, which turned into EOF.
Re: Non-English-based programming languages
#74Seeing 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…
I can't imagine programming with ESL and having to deal with code where some english speaker thought they were super clever and named various classes and variables after things that are super referential or punny. I see a lot of classes at my current job named after 80s TV shows or inside jokes. Maybe having ESL would make that type of thing easier to deal with actually since it drives me up the wall.
Re: Non-English-based programming languages
#75Earlier quoted context omitted.
>which has no lower case This is exactly what bothers me. Why no lower case? Why not no upper case? You'd need the same number of keys, and it would be more legible. It would use the same amount of space.
All caps means no ascenders or descenders, so actually less vertical space per line.
This is a good point, actually. I'm still not sure it works, though - at the lower bounds of visual resolution, are capitals easier to distinguish than cursive letters? Because otherwise, any size capital can be compared to an equivalent box cursive, and I think the capital would be less legible. Perhaps the typically smaller eyes of cursive letters would swing the pendulum the other way, with smeary ink? I think with simply low resolution, cursive would always win out.
Re: Non-English-based programming languages
#76Seeing 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…
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.
That's debatable. It's impossible for me to say "if" in any context without thinking about programming now. I can't help it.
Re: Non-English-based programming languages
#77Seeing 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…
I can't imagine programming with ESL and having to deal with code where some english speaker thought they were super clever and named various classes and variables after things that are super referential or punny. I see a lot of classes at my current job named after 80s TV shows or inside jokes. Maybe having ESL would make that type of thing easier to deal with actually since it drives me up the wall.
Classes named for inside jokes are an example of horrible programming practices which should never get past code review
Re: Non-English-based programming languages
#78Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
having learned Excel functions in English and having to use them at work in German makes me always nervous
I'm never able to get a function to work as I don't even know their equivalents in German.
Re: Non-English-based programming languages
#79Seeing 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.
Same here. I still remember feeling pretty dumb the day I realized that "if" and "else" were also English words.
Re: Non-English-based programming languages
#80Seeing 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…
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.
But it’s easy to forget how concepts you understand so well they feel natural and are burned in your muscle memory are foreign and difficult to others, beginners in particular. A way to measure that is to teach. When you try to explain simple programming concepts, you often realise what millage you have behind you.