On Fri, 17 Oct 2003 at 19:01 GMT, Ron Johnson penned:
On Fri, 2003-10-17 at 12:29, Monique Y. Herman wrote:
You're right; the anglo-centric nature of most programming languages is distressing. It would be fun to code in a language based on a totally
Distressing???????? What an over-reaction.
Guess what? When French/German/Chinese/Spanish/Portuguese/Japanese Computer Scientists decide to write a programming language in their own native language, there will be programming languages in those languages. But then, why did Niklaus Wirth use English key words, even though he is Swiss/German?
Distressing was the wrong word. I personally find variety interesting, and using a language with a different natural-language origin would be entertaining. Then again, I'm pretty good with languages, so I might be in the minority there.
Of course you're right that languages based on various natural languages will exist when people write them. That's a tautology. I was mourning the fact that it seemingly hasn't happened. Maybe if I had half a clue about what my ideal programming language would contain, I'd go about writing one with non-English keywords, just to entertain myself.
english has a fairly simple a regular grammar so it's fairly easy to create english based programming language - the basic control structures are pretty much english sentences.
This would be fairly hard todo in other languages that has more irregular grammar (the ones I know anything about have a lot more complicated/irregular grammar).
On a personal level, I find "local color" interesting, and the ever-more-prevalent assumption that everyone can or should speak English saddens me, for the same reason that it saddens me when a Walmart or a Starbucks puts a local storefront out of business.
IMO it's not the same. I don't think I would like to program in slovak based programming language (even though it's my native language).
So, in the spirit of "think globally, act locally," I try not to assume that everyone speaks English, and I try to buy stuff from friendly, helpful local stores rather than saving five bucks by buying from Walmart.
sometime it's better to do what makes sense, instead of trying to push one or another agenda that doesn't really have too much to do with the issue. I am all for local stores but I want my phone to work everywhere (i.e. not everything should be globalized, not everything should be localized (IMO))
erik
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