On Jun 23, 2010, at 12:34 AM, SundaraRaman R wrote: > This is an idea that originated in #perl6 during a discussion with slavik ( > http://irclog.perlgeek.de/perl6/2010-01-17#i_1907093). The goal is to allow > Perl 6 source code to be written in natural languages other than English. > The motivation would be to make programming accessible to a lot of people > who don't know English well (or at all), to make it easier to teach > programming to kids in non-English speaking countries, and just plain fun. > > Currently, since Perl 6 (afaik) supports Unicode identifiers, the only place > a modification is required would be in the keywords. However, it is not a > simple matter of substituting s/keyword/local_language_keyword/ since the > resultant phrasing might be awkward or meaningless and unreadable (examples > in the linked discussion). It requires reordering the syntax of each > construct. > > Is it possible to do this at a module level? If so, how much English usage > would that require before someone could start programming in their own > language - say, two, for a shebang line and a "use Lang::<Language>" line? > or zero, by using "perl6 -MLang::<Language>" in the command line? > > Are there any ongoing works in this vein?
Having been that road down at least once in my life already (using the TUTOR language), I would be very much against adding this as a standard feature. Unless you have people that can provide support (aka a user base) for that language, you are going to introduce a babylonian knot of misunderstanding in mailinglist, chats and what not. If this would be added as a feature, then there should be an easy way to take any source file in a different natural language, and have it rendered into English (or any other of the languages supported that way). My old 2cents worth... Going back to lurking mode again. Liz
