91–100 of 228 posts
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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.
I thought VBA was always in english (syntax & APIs). Only excel formulas are displayed translated in the regular Excel UI.
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…
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.
Perl in Latin: https://metacpan.org/pod/Lingua::Romana::Perligata
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Many years ago, in elementary/primary school I went to a computer camp when I was living in Belgium. We used Logo in French on Macs. I don't remember much, but the keyword for random was 'hazard'. My experience was actually not bad; I didn't have any trouble associating the words with the abstract concepts involved in sending the turtle around the screen. I was doing fairly simplistic stuff though, I'll concede. I wo…
Interesting, I hadn't thought about"random" much, but hazard kinda makes sense even in English. Like "allow me to hazard a guess."
I've seen version of LOGO with all instructions translated into Polish used for education in 80s/90s. It was pretty OK but it wasn't really based on Polish, it wasn't using any features of Polish language, just translated the English commands to make it slightly easier for the kids. To make a programming language based on Polish that captures the core of the language would be pretty strange - variable names would nee…
Just like Polish noun cases, I don't see how any of the interesting distinctive features of English are captured by programming languages.
There are only a few reserved (English) words, most of which are shared among different programming languages. Why is this any more of an issue than all the Italian words used in musical notation?
It's not, it's just fun to think about. Likewise french dominance of culinary terms, etc.. What I find more interesting is actually how removed from spoken English most programming language reserved words are. Taking C and derivatives: "if" is pretty close, and "while" captures the meaning of the word but not its typical usage. The meaning of "return" is correct, but jargon (yes, you're "going back" to where you were…
So I think it's actually a good example of your broader point, that the meaning of English words as programming keywords is often very different from their meaning in other contexts.
The Wikipedia list does not mention Tampio, an OO language where programs are written in proper Finnish: https://github.com/fergusq/tampio As an example, here is kertoma.itp (an example routine to calculate a factorial): Pienen luvun kertoma on riippuen siitä, onko se pienempi tai yhtä suuri kuin yksi, joko yksi tai pieni luku kerrottuna pienen luvun edeltäjän kertomalla. Luvun edeltäjä on se vähennettynä yhdellä. Ol…
Which reminds me of 10+ years ago when I worked for a consultancy and often on site with one of its main clients. Both were originally Finnish but by then very large multinational enterprises.
Occasionally whilst doing some archaeology investigation of some internal libraries or old systems you encounter an ancient Java (or worse) library using Finnish class and methods names.
Usually confused the heck out of all of us as there never were a Finnish speaker on any of the projects I was on, and I was there for 6 years. But as much as a decompiled java program you can guess what it does, though not what it intended to do...
Using non-English in programming may have made a little sense when they were a smaller Finnish only company, but 10+ years later, many mergers and acquisitions etc and it really did not make sense any more .:)
Considering the offices I worked for them in Oslo, Stockholm and Copenhagen the development teams was all a mix of nationalities (Scandinavians, English, Belgian, Italian, Polish, Indian) using anything but English would have been silly by then.