Hacker News Reader

We've had localized programming languages: Visual Basic for Applications in Germany had "prüfe" instead of "select" (yes, with Umlaut): https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_Basic_for_Applications?...

Today German Excel still doesn't accept "XLOOKUP", but insists on "XVERWEIS". On input, that is, it silently converts languages when opening .xlsx files.

View on HN

But do you think they failed because they were localized per country, rather than designed for global compatibility from the start?

Silent conversions could definitely be messy, but what if there were a standardized system that allowed programming in any script while keeping everything interoperable? Could that avoid the pitfalls of past localized languages?

> silently converts languages when opening .xlsx files.

Sounds like a bug waiting to happen

everything is a bug waiting to happen… :)

I used to use excel in school in hungarian and at home in english.

I don't think there were bugs in opening files, but I sure got some useless error messages when I used the wrong language!

Reply on news.ycombinator.com