Path: csiph.com!v102.xanadu-bbs.net!xanadu-bbs.net!news.glorb.com!border3.nntp.dca.giganews.com!border1.nntp.dca.giganews.com!border4.nntp.dca.giganews.com!border2.nntp.dca.giganews.com!nntp.giganews.com!news.iecc.com!nerds-end From: Robert A Duff Newsgroups: comp.compilers Subject: Re: Have we reached the asymptotic plateau of innovation in programming languages Date: Thu, 07 Jun 2012 16:06:03 -0400 Organization: The World Public Access UNIX, Brookline, MA Lines: 25 Sender: news@iecc.com Approved: comp.compilers@iecc.com Message-ID: <12-06-018@comp.compilers> References: <12-03-012@comp.compilers> <12-03-014@comp.compilers> <12-06-008@comp.compilers> <12-06-011@comp.compilers> NNTP-Posting-Host: news.iecc.com Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Trace: leila.iecc.com 1339190725 58091 64.57.183.58 (8 Jun 2012 21:25:25 GMT) X-Complaints-To: abuse@iecc.com NNTP-Posting-Date: Fri, 8 Jun 2012 21:25:25 +0000 (UTC) Keywords: design, i18n Posted-Date: 08 Jun 2012 17:25:25 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:679 "BartC" writes: > And many languages already make it possible to define aliases for keywords; Which languages? Robin mentioned PL/I. Others? [C and anything else with a preprocessor. -John] And what about predefined libraries? I imagine it's not too hard for a non-English speaker to memorize the meaning of 50-or-so English keywords, but what about thousands of names in the predefined libraries? Or third-party libraries? > With Unicode, you have the situation that many identical glyphs have > different character codes, creating problems with different identifiers that > look exactly the same. I'd solve that by allowing Unicode letters in identifiers, but require the programmer to declare up front which ones they want to use (in a project-wide configuration file of some sort). Nobody wants to use all of Unicode -- they just want to use the letters of one or two natural languages, plus maybe a few symbols like a proper <= sign. In comments, anything goes (allow all Unicode characters). - Bob