Groups > comp.lang.java.programmer > #21284

Re: java software naming question

From	Joshua Cranmer <Pidgeot18@verizon.invalid>
Newsgroups	comp.lang.java.programmer
Subject	Re: java software naming question
Date	2013-01-10 01:09 -0600
Organization	A noiseless patient Spider
Message-ID	<kclpfu$nhg$1@dont-email.me> (permalink)
References	(2 earlier) <b094ad0b-ff6d-446c-aeee-766ec9560f1d@googlegroups.com> <n55ne8pq1e5i65fb0mfrfu3tjp3u5a7mvv@4ax.com> <kcg9ei$di6$1@dont-email.me> <edare81bupt3i8iad6hmtl5c952opqvv75@4ax.com> <fnfre8d0bktbt2mk4djdq1ffuv99tn0aqc@4ax.com>

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On 1/9/2013 1:18 PM, Roedy Green wrote:
> On Wed, 09 Jan 2013 09:40:47 -0800, Roedy Green
> <see_website@mindprod.com.invalid> wrote, quoted or indirectly quoted
> someone who said :
>
>> That happened not
>> because of any features of the language, but because of the success of
>> the British Empire.
>
> Once it became the interlanguage, it start evolving very rapidly as
> new technical terms were added.  It has a huge vocabulary compared
> with many other languages.  That helps keep it as the interlanguage.

English's rich vocabulary has more to due with its invasions in the 
Middle Ages than changes since the 19th century, although the lack of a 
central authority that tries to control the language probably helps 
absorption of new terminology more readily. Technical terms tend to be 
exchanged between languages largely as direct transliterations, so they 
don't really count for a rich vocabulary.

> It also likes to be specific.  Not leaving much up to interpretation
> is great for science and business but not so great for Zen poetry.

Yet Lobjan never caught on for some reason.

> One of the things I think about every once in a while is what would be
> the characteristics of a ideal interlanguage. I explored Esperanto. It
> has had lots of time to catch on, but has not.  I explore why in my
> essay on it.  http://mindprod.com/esperanto/esperanto.html

Looking at your essay on it, there are several inaccuracies:
1. Chinese characters are not mutually intelligible between Japanese, 
Korean, and Chinese, or even the various dialects of Chinese (Cantonese 
and Mandarin in particular). A better relationship is like the Greek and 
Latin alphabets: the Latin alphabet directly descended from the Greek 
one, and you can sometimes change the two sets and not notice, but there 
are definitely cases where you can't. This is why the CJK Han 
unification in Unicode was very controversial.

2. Discussing "words" in the context of multiple languages is 
inaccurate, so comparing wpm of Chinese IME versus English isn't useful, 
especially when you claim later that you could type Chinese characters 
via their English equivalents for an IME.

3. The point about radicals letting you sometime infer meaning is like 
the claim that sign language is intuitive because it's visual: it works 
rather less well than most supporters claim when you go and measure it 
(confirmation bias).

4. English is also moderately agglutinative. Consider the word 
"antidisestablishmentarianism" and how many roots are in that word. Or 
more useful words in modern discourse like nanotechnology.

5. Your point about "unifying Asian languages" flies rather greatly in 
the face of what I know about East Asian history and smacks more of 
Chinese propaganda than truth (see my point about number 1).

6. You imply a ranking of languages by total fluent speakers but give a 
listing of what appears to be languages by native, first-language speakers.

7. It is probably not a matter of time until the US is predominantly 
Spanish speaking. The most recent demographic trends, for example, show 
greater increase in Asian-descent populations than Hispanic.

I'm too tired to give a full explanation of why I think Esperanto 
failed, but the salient points I believe are the following:

1. It's a constructed language, so every fault that it has is less 
excusable than native languages. These faults include, but are not 
limited to, grammatical gender, agreement, phonological complexity, 
orthographic strictures, inflection-versus-agglutination, and choice of 
roots for word.

2. Internal warfare about degree of reform of the language (cf., Ido 
reforms).

3. The general decline of Western Europe in the early 20th century, 
relative to the United States and the USSR changed the position of 
languages in Europe from being a family of roughly balanced powers (UK, 
France, Germany) whose citizenry were apt to be polylingual to one of 
two poles dominated by very powerful monolingual large countries (the US 
and the USSR). Polylingual creoles just didn't have as much utility at 
that point.

> I am also interested in how you might use teams of computer
> programmers who do not all speak English.  I envisage some SCIDs that
> greatly tighten up the ability of programmers to track what others are
> doing and to decouple how the program is displayed from how it is
> stored.

As someone who tries not to be monolingual, I still see programming as 
being basically monolingually English, for the simple reason that there 
needs to be a common language to specify, design, and implement APIs in. 
That language is English for historical reasons. And before you suggest 
machine translation, I will point out that APIs are places where 
precision in language is necessary, and machine translation has yet to 
be able to translate text (especially the kind of noisy text that you'd 
find in programs and their API documentation) to anywhere near that kind 
of precision and is unlikely to do so in the next quarter-century.

-- 
Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, not 
tried it. -- Donald E. Knuth

Thread

java software naming question mcheung63@gmail.com - 2013-01-07 01:11 -0800
  Re: java software naming question "Aryeh M. Friedman" <Aryeh.Friedman@gmail.com> - 2013-01-07 01:21 -0800
  Re: java software naming question "Aryeh M. Friedman" <Aryeh.Friedman@gmail.com> - 2013-01-07 01:26 -0800
  Re: java software naming question Muco <muco@nomail.com> - 2013-01-07 20:38 +1100
    Re: java software naming question Lew <lewbloch@gmail.com> - 2013-01-07 11:12 -0800
  Re: java software naming question Patricia Shanahan <pats@acm.org> - 2013-01-07 07:03 -0800
    Re: java software naming question "Aryeh M. Friedman" <Aryeh.Friedman@gmail.com> - 2013-01-07 07:08 -0800
    Re: java software naming question Gene Wirchenko <genew@telus.net> - 2013-01-07 08:34 -0800
      Re: java software naming question Magnus Warker <magnus@mailinator.com> - 2013-01-07 18:26 +0100
        Re: java software naming question markspace <markspace@nospam.nospam> - 2013-01-07 10:54 -0800
          Re: java software naming question "Chris Uppal" <chris.uppal@metagnostic.REMOVE-THIS.org> - 2013-01-07 19:41 +0000
            Re: java software naming question Eric Sosman <esosman@comcast-dot-net.invalid> - 2013-01-07 17:13 -0500
              Re: java software naming question Gene Wirchenko <genew@telus.net> - 2013-01-07 18:44 -0800
              Re: java software naming question Roedy Green <see_website@mindprod.com.invalid> - 2013-01-07 19:37 -0800
        Re: java software naming question Roedy Green <see_website@mindprod.com.invalid> - 2013-01-07 19:33 -0800
          Re: java software naming question Mark <i@dontgetlotsofspamanymore.invalid> - 2013-01-08 09:39 +0000
            Re: java software naming question Arne Vajhøj <arne@vajhoej.dk> - 2013-01-08 20:26 -0500
              Re: java software naming question Mark <i@dontgetlotsofspamanymore.invalid> - 2013-01-09 09:32 +0000
                Re: java software naming question Arne Vajhøj <arne@vajhoej.dk> - 2013-01-09 18:41 -0500
                Re: java software naming question Lew <lewbloch@gmail.com> - 2013-01-09 16:23 -0800
                Re: java software naming question Mark <i@dontgetlotsofspamanymore.invalid> - 2013-01-10 09:44 +0000
                Re: java software naming question lipska the kat <"nospam at neversurrender dot co dot uk"> - 2013-01-10 10:16 +0000
                Re: java software naming question Arne Vajhøj <arne@vajhoej.dk> - 2013-01-12 17:07 -0500
                Re: java software naming question Arne Vajhøj <arne@vajhoej.dk> - 2013-01-12 17:03 -0500
  Re: java software naming question Lew <lewbloch@gmail.com> - 2013-01-07 11:11 -0800
    Re: java software naming question lipska the kat <lipskathekat@yahoo.co.uk> - 2013-01-07 19:48 +0000
    Re: java software naming question Arne Vajhøj <arne@vajhoej.dk> - 2013-01-07 18:56 -0500
      Re: java software naming question Lew <lewbloch@gmail.com> - 2013-01-07 16:05 -0800
  Re: java software naming question Arne Vajhøj <arne@vajhoej.dk> - 2013-01-07 18:55 -0500
  Re: java software naming question Roedy Green <see_website@mindprod.com.invalid> - 2013-01-07 18:04 -0800
    Re: java software naming question Lew <lewbloch@gmail.com> - 2013-01-07 18:33 -0800
      Re: java software naming question Roedy Green <see_website@mindprod.com.invalid> - 2013-01-07 19:57 -0800
        Re: java software naming question Gene Wirchenko <genew@telus.net> - 2013-01-07 20:11 -0800
        Re: java software naming question Joshua Cranmer <Pidgeot18@verizon.invalid> - 2013-01-07 23:05 -0600
          Re: java software naming question Roedy Green <see_website@mindprod.com.invalid> - 2013-01-09 09:40 -0800
            Re: java software naming question Roedy Green <see_website@mindprod.com.invalid> - 2013-01-09 11:18 -0800
              Re: java software naming question Patricia Shanahan <pats@acm.org> - 2013-01-09 11:59 -0800
                Re: java software naming question Roedy Green <see_website@mindprod.com.invalid> - 2013-01-09 23:20 -0800
                Re: java software naming question Stuart <DerTopper@web.de> - 2013-01-10 09:32 +0100
              Re: java software naming question Joshua Cranmer <Pidgeot18@verizon.invalid> - 2013-01-10 01:09 -0600
            Re: java software naming question Joshua Cranmer <Pidgeot18@verizon.invalid> - 2013-01-09 23:59 -0600
              Re: java software naming question Roedy Green <see_website@mindprod.com.invalid> - 2013-01-09 23:36 -0800
        Re: java software naming question Lew <lewbloch@gmail.com> - 2013-01-07 21:46 -0800
      Re: java software naming question Joshua Cranmer <Pidgeot18@verizon.invalid> - 2013-01-07 21:58 -0600
        Re: java software naming question Roedy Green <see_website@mindprod.com.invalid> - 2013-01-08 00:19 -0800
        Re: java software naming question Roedy Green <see_website@mindprod.com.invalid> - 2013-01-08 00:22 -0800
          Re: java software naming question "Aryeh M. Friedman" <Aryeh.Friedman@gmail.com> - 2013-01-08 00:30 -0800
            Re: java software naming question Roedy Green <see_website@mindprod.com.invalid> - 2013-01-09 09:41 -0800
            Re: java software naming question Roedy Green <see_website@mindprod.com.invalid> - 2013-01-09 10:51 -0800
              Re: java software naming question Joshua Cranmer <Pidgeot18@verizon.invalid> - 2013-01-09 23:27 -0600
          Re: java software naming question Lew <lewbloch@gmail.com> - 2013-01-08 07:07 -0800
            Re: java software naming question Joshua Cranmer <Pidgeot18@verizon.invalid> - 2013-01-08 09:31 -0600
              Re: java software naming question Lew <lewbloch@gmail.com> - 2013-01-08 07:36 -0800
          Re: java software naming question Gene Wirchenko <genew@telus.net> - 2013-01-08 08:47 -0800
            Re: java software naming question Stuart <DerTopper@web.de> - 2013-01-08 21:56 +0100
              Re: java software naming question Lew <lewbloch@gmail.com> - 2013-01-08 13:04 -0800
            Re: java software naming question Patricia Shanahan <pats@acm.org> - 2013-01-08 14:14 -0800
              Re: java software naming question Lew <lewbloch@gmail.com> - 2013-01-08 15:19 -0800
              Re: java software naming question Gene Wirchenko <genew@telus.net> - 2013-01-08 16:22 -0800
              Re: java software naming question Mark <i@dontgetlotsofspamanymore.invalid> - 2013-01-09 09:34 +0000
              Re: java software naming question Roedy Green <see_website@mindprod.com.invalid> - 2013-01-09 09:50 -0800
                Re: java software naming question Gene Wirchenko <genew@telus.net> - 2013-01-09 10:10 -0800
                Re: java software naming question Roedy Green <see_website@mindprod.com.invalid> - 2013-01-09 10:49 -0800
            Re: java software naming question Arne Vajhøj <arne@vajhoej.dk> - 2013-01-08 20:37 -0500
        Re: java software naming question Roedy Green <see_website@mindprod.com.invalid> - 2013-01-08 00:26 -0800
          Re: java software naming question Lew <lewbloch@gmail.com> - 2013-01-08 07:12 -0800
            Re: java software naming question Joshua Cranmer <Pidgeot18@verizon.invalid> - 2013-01-08 09:27 -0600
              Re: java software naming question Lew <lewbloch@gmail.com> - 2013-01-08 07:32 -0800
                Re: java software naming question Roedy Green <see_website@mindprod.com.invalid> - 2013-01-09 09:55 -0800
                Re: java software naming question Lew <lewbloch@gmail.com> - 2013-01-09 12:53 -0800
                Re: java software naming question Roedy Green <see_website@mindprod.com.invalid> - 2013-01-09 23:37 -0800
              Re: java software naming question Gene Wirchenko <genew@telus.net> - 2013-01-08 08:50 -0800
          Re: java software naming question Joshua Cranmer <Pidgeot18@verizon.invalid> - 2013-01-08 09:26 -0600
            Re: java software naming question Roedy Green <see_website@mindprod.com.invalid> - 2013-01-09 09:59 -0800
              Re: java software naming question Joshua Cranmer <Pidgeot18@verizon.invalid> - 2013-01-09 23:31 -0600
    Re: java software naming question "Aryeh M. Friedman" <Aryeh.Friedman@gmail.com> - 2013-01-08 00:24 -0800
  Re: java software naming question johnjagu25@gmail.com - 2013-01-08 08:39 -0800

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