Re: Must programming languages be English ?

[Sean Conner <sean@...>]

It was thus said that the Great Tim Hill once stated:
> It would be interesting to see how far they got with this bureaucratic
> madness:
> 
> Musical scores use annotations (translation: keywords) typically in
> italian (Con Brio, Allegro etc.). Are these too to be translated? What
> about french terms in recipes? Saute? What about ballet terms?

  For whatever reason, Italy "owns" music, France "owns" food, and for what
it's worth, the US "owns" computers [1].

  It's entirely possible for a non-US country to invent a computer language
[2]  that's not based on English.  Håstad anyone? [3]

	(*
	    Thanks to wlofie for translating the code
	    from Pascal
	    into Håstad
	*)

	medan not_done
	börja
	  för x:= 1 till 5 gör
	  börja
	    om person^.age = 120 så
	      too_old(person);
	    om person^.age > 130 så
	      gåtill person_should_be_dead;
	  slut;
	slut;

I might not like it, but I could get used to it [4].  But I doubt it will be
popular world wide due to US influence [5].  But hey, if Sweeden has as much
influence these days as the US, then we might be all programming in Håstad
instead of Lua [6].

  -spc (Bjork bjork bjork!)

[1]	In a similar way, the only country that makes stamps without the
	country name printed on it is England, but that's because they
	created the things.  It's not to say that Italy "created" music, but
	they probably did the most innovative things that everyone else
	wanted, and thus, we ended up with Italian terms for music.

[2]	Yes, I know not all computer languages are not created in the US.  

[3]	Which I created to make a point:
	http://boston.conman.org/2008/01/04.1

[4]	Five years later, and I *think* I reversed engineered that "gåtill"
	must be "return".  It's the only thing that makes sense in that
	context.

[5]	And the United Kingdom, which "owned" a full quarter of the world
	about a hundred years ago.

[6]	Ha!