Path: csiph.com!v102.xanadu-bbs.net!xanadu-bbs.net!news.glorb.com!border3.nntp.dca.giganews.com!border1.nntp.dca.giganews.com!nntp.giganews.com!news.iecc.com!nerds-end From: Joshua Cranmer Newsgroups: comp.compilers Subject: Re: Have we reached the asymptotic plateau of innovation in programming languages Date: Thu, 07 Jun 2012 08:00:39 -0400 Organization: A noiseless patient Spider Lines: 42 Sender: news@iecc.com Approved: comp.compilers@iecc.com Message-ID: <12-06-013@comp.compilers> References: <12-03-012@comp.compilers> <12-03-014@comp.compilers> <12-06-008@comp.compilers> <12-06-010@comp.compilers> NNTP-Posting-Host: news.iecc.com X-Trace: leila.iecc.com 1339085281 47738 64.57.183.58 (7 Jun 2012 16:08:01 GMT) X-Complaints-To: abuse@iecc.com NNTP-Posting-Date: Thu, 7 Jun 2012 16:08:01 +0000 (UTC) Keywords: i18n Posted-Date: 07 Jun 2012 12:08:01 EDT X-submission-address: compilers@iecc.com X-moderator-address: compilers-request@iecc.com X-FAQ-and-archives: http://compilers.iecc.com Xref: csiph.com comp.compilers:674 On 6/6/2012 6:40 PM, glen herrmannsfeldt wrote: >> The ASCII character set has been a limiting factor for programming >> language design for decades. Here I'm talking about the interface that >> faces the programmer, not "language features" that enable buzzword >> compliant programming. The biggest problem with going outside of ASCII is that keyboard support stops being universal, with the lesser issue of character set proliferation. The standard alphanumeric ASCII characters (and most of the standard punctuation characters, though some get hard to type IIRC) are on pretty much every keyboard attached to a modernish computer. Beyond that, you have issues: people in the US typically don't have easy access to even basic accented Latin characters like [e with an accent, which the moderation software smashed -John] (Which, on this keyboard, required an Alt+numpad combo, necessitating both memorizing the Unicode value and enabling/disabling the numpad) Korean keyboards would let you type Hangul more easily, but accented characters are as, if not more, difficult to type for them. And good luck if you decide that some keyword needs, say, Ancient Egyptian Hieroglyphics to be typed in. Sure, you can make the editor do things for you (this is what happens for APL IIRC), but to most programmers, it just seems like you're making their lives hard for no reason. >> Another limiting factor, not readily apparent to North Americans: the >> English language. Most, if not all, programming languages applied world >> wide are based on English, with keywords in English. > > I have wondered about this for many years. I have asked people whose > native language isn't English, but it doesn't seem to bother them > at all. Of course if I ask them, it is likely that they speak enough > English not to see much of a problem. I once recall reading an open source program produced by a Portuguese university. All local variable names were in Portuguese. Most of the class and method names were in English. -- Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, not tried it. -- Donald E. Knuth