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Comment by springogeek | Hacker News Reader

It is beautiful, but it's a barrier also. I don't think you should be barred from learning to code because you don't speak a language which uses the Latin/ASCII character set.

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I disagree. Calling English keywords in programming languages a barrier is the same as describing symbols in mathematics as a barrier. It doesn't matter which word signals an IF clause, the global uniformity is what is really important.

English has become the basis for the symbols of programming. You should not think of code as prose, it is simply code.

I don't think keywords are the problem, it's library function/type names that will be much more difficult to learn / interpret.

A localized language would only "fix" the keywords, and all the libraries (most made by third parties) would be even more difficult to learn/interpret - because if they wouldn't be in English, they likely would not be in your language, they'd be in someone else's non-English language.

There is no alternative. Mountains of code, documentation, Q&A posts, tooling have all been created in English. Even if you use a programming language that supports your own language you will be crippling your ability. Learning enough English words to use pythonh would be much easier than having to reinvent the world in your own language.

You're not barred, you have to learn relevant combinations of 26 symbols. If you cannot do that, I doubt you'll become proficient in programming anyway. OTOH,knowledge sharing in the field would be severely impeded if every piece of source code was localized to the wim of the author/marketplace/whatever.

feel the same. there's a lot of people out there who never get a chance to learn any english. to write your own code based on ascii / latin char set might be ok, but to interpret other's code etc. would be very difficult. so for example in a school, having only code examples with ascii could be a significant barrier to teach ,when all other subjects presented are in the local language / character set.

But it still works! Right? The constraints imposed by the programming language self document our var names.

I understand Hindi YT vids that are science related. I dont know Hindi. It's fantastic.

Latin1 is critical. Handing over acceptiable byte sequences that our cli's acccept to standards bodies is a mistake. https://github.com/jakeogh/angryfiles

Pardon my french but that's a lame excuse. We are talking about maybe 20 crucial words like "if", "for", "while" etc. If somebody can't learn those, progressing with fully formed programming language will be a mighty challenge.

The drawbacks are numerous and huge - today you can get any code from any guy on the planet, and can read it instantly. He can name variables and comment stuff in his native language, still no problem. That's extremely empowering, and to lose it just that somebody doesn't have to learn few keywords is... dumb.

Having native programming languages beyond some playing around is foolish and step in wrong direction for all of us on so many levels, especially long term.

Missing the point... Everyone has to jump that barrier so that there's no barrier between us, which is much more important.

Native English speakers don’t

English keywords often have only the most tenuous links to their vernacular meaning. It's an unavoidable side effect of how different spoken and programming languages are. Compared to the difficulty of learning programming itself, remembering particular keywords is a tiny fraction of the mental burden.

Such is life, sometimes people have an unfair advantage.

But in this case, having a common language is still much more valuable than the unfairness that this common language is the mother tongue of some.

This is such an odd exaggeration; the number of words you have to learn to type are just abysmally small. You don't have to know what the word 'integer' is to know how it works in your code.

I-N-T, three letters, this symbol means that the number does not have a fraction associated with it.

As for the code base and documentation? Well, wouldn't you rather a lingua franca as opposed to trying to Google Translate your way through comments?

I think this point is vital, and yet completely lost in the current zeitgeist. Shared foundations matter. Without them, we can't communicate effectively.

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.

It's not, but I don't get your point.

Your underlying point seems to be that the world would be better if we all spoke one language.

I disagree, and to my mind programming is no different than linguistics in this regard.

Sorry, there is no underlying point.

You are going to need to more clearly explain how this

  That's my point: everyone has to learn a bit of english, and that's good.

is "good" then.

Refer to my first post to find why.

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