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[beginner] What's wrong?

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  [beginner] What's wrong? Michael Okuntsov <okuntsov.mikhail@yandex.ru> - 2016-04-02 03:48 +0600
    Re: [beginner] What's wrong? Michael Okuntsov <okuntsov.mikhail@yandex.ru> - 2016-04-02 04:10 +0600
      Re: [beginner] What's wrong? sohcahtoa82@gmail.com - 2016-04-01 15:44 -0700
        Re: [beginner] What's wrong? Random832 <random832@fastmail.com> - 2016-04-02 00:27 -0400
        Re: [beginner] What's wrong? Michael Selik <michael.selik@gmail.com> - 2016-04-02 05:36 +0000
        Re: [beginner] What's wrong? William Ray Wing <wrw@mac.com> - 2016-04-02 00:54 -0400
        Re: [beginner] What's wrong? Chris Angelico <rosuav@gmail.com> - 2016-04-02 19:15 +1100
        Re: [beginner] What's wrong? Michael Selik <michael.selik@gmail.com> - 2016-04-02 14:48 +0000
        Re: [beginner] What's wrong? Chris Angelico <rosuav@gmail.com> - 2016-04-03 01:55 +1100
          Re: [beginner] What's wrong? Marko Rauhamaa <marko@pacujo.net> - 2016-04-02 18:07 +0300
            Re: [beginner] What's wrong? Chris Angelico <rosuav@gmail.com> - 2016-04-03 02:36 +1100
            Re: [beginner] What's wrong? Steven D'Aprano <steve@pearwood.info> - 2016-04-03 02:06 +1000
              Re: [beginner] What's wrong? Marko Rauhamaa <marko@pacujo.net> - 2016-04-02 19:44 +0300
                Re: [beginner] What's wrong? Thomas 'PointedEars' Lahn <PointedEars@web.de> - 2016-04-02 19:12 +0200
                  Re: [beginner] What's wrong? Rustom Mody <rustompmody@gmail.com> - 2016-04-02 10:28 -0700
                    Re: [beginner] What's wrong? Marko Rauhamaa <marko@pacujo.net> - 2016-04-02 21:43 +0300
                    Re: [beginner] What's wrong? Thomas 'PointedEars' Lahn <PointedEars@web.de> - 2016-04-03 13:47 +0200
                      Re: [beginner] What's wrong? Rustom Mody <rustompmody@gmail.com> - 2016-04-03 07:30 -0700
                        Re: [beginner] What's wrong? Dan Sommers <dan@tombstonezero.net> - 2016-04-03 15:25 +0000
                          Re: [beginner] What's wrong? Rustom Mody <rustompmody@gmail.com> - 2016-04-03 08:39 -0700
                            Re: [beginner] What's wrong? Dan Sommers <dan@tombstonezero.net> - 2016-04-03 16:22 +0000
                              Re: [beginner] What's wrong? Chris Angelico <rosuav@gmail.com> - 2016-04-04 02:44 +1000
                              Re: [beginner] What's wrong? Rustom Mody <rustompmody@gmail.com> - 2016-04-03 10:18 -0700
                                Re: [beginner] What's wrong? Chris Angelico <rosuav@gmail.com> - 2016-04-04 03:35 +1000
                                Re: [beginner] What's wrong? Dan Sommers <dan@tombstonezero.net> - 2016-04-03 18:26 +0000
                          Re: [beginner] What's wrong? Rustom Mody <rustompmody@gmail.com> - 2016-04-03 08:46 -0700
                            Re: [beginner] What's wrong? Larry Martell <larry.martell@gmail.com> - 2016-04-03 11:55 -0400
                            Re: [beginner] What's wrong? Chris Angelico <rosuav@gmail.com> - 2016-04-04 01:53 +1000
                              Re: [beginner] What's wrong? Rustom Mody <rustompmody@gmail.com> - 2016-04-03 09:49 -0700
                                Re: [beginner] What's wrong? Dan Sommers <dan@tombstonezero.net> - 2016-04-03 18:32 +0000
                            Re: [beginner] What's wrong? Dan Sommers <dan@tombstonezero.net> - 2016-04-03 16:07 +0000
                        Re: [beginner] What's wrong? Thomas 'PointedEars' Lahn <PointedEars@web.de> - 2016-04-06 21:56 +0200
                          Unicode normalisation [was Re: [beginner] What's wrong?] Steven D'Aprano <steve@pearwood.info> - 2016-04-07 11:37 +1000
                            Re: Unicode normalisation [was Re: [beginner] What's wrong?] Marko Rauhamaa <marko@pacujo.net> - 2016-04-07 09:36 +0300
                            Re: Unicode normalisation [was Re: [beginner] What's wrong?] Peter Pearson <pkpearson@nowhere.invalid> - 2016-04-07 16:51 +0000
                              Re: Unicode normalisation [was Re: [beginner] What's wrong?] Rustom Mody <rustompmody@gmail.com> - 2016-04-07 21:43 -0700
                                Re: Unicode normalisation [was Re: [beginner] What's wrong?] Rustom Mody <rustompmody@gmail.com> - 2016-04-07 21:47 -0700
                                Re: Unicode normalisation [was Re: [beginner] What's wrong?] Chris Angelico <rosuav@gmail.com> - 2016-04-08 14:54 +1000
                                  Re: Unicode normalisation [was Re: [beginner] What's wrong?] Rustom Mody <rustompmody@gmail.com> - 2016-04-08 10:51 -0700
                              Re: Unicode normalisation [was Re: [beginner] What's wrong?] Steven D'Aprano <steve@pearwood.info> - 2016-04-08 16:00 +1000
                                Re: Unicode normalisation [was Re: [beginner] What's wrong?] Chris Angelico <rosuav@gmail.com> - 2016-04-08 16:13 +1000
                                Re: Unicode normalisation [was Re: [beginner] What's wrong?] Peter Pearson <pkpearson@nowhere.invalid> - 2016-04-08 17:21 +0000
                                  Re: Unicode normalisation [was Re: [beginner] What's wrong?] Marko Rauhamaa <marko@pacujo.net> - 2016-04-08 20:44 +0300
                                    Re: Unicode normalisation [was Re: [beginner] What's wrong?] Chris Angelico <rosuav@gmail.com> - 2016-04-09 03:50 +1000
                                      Re: Unicode normalisation [was Re: [beginner] What's wrong?] Peter Pearson <pkpearson@nowhere.invalid> - 2016-04-08 18:03 +0000
                                        Re: Unicode normalisation [was Re: [beginner] What's wrong?] Rustom Mody <rustompmody@gmail.com> - 2016-04-08 11:17 -0700
                                          Re: Unicode normalisation [was Re: [beginner] What's wrong?] Rustom Mody <rustompmody@gmail.com> - 2016-04-08 11:20 -0700
                                    Re: Unicode normalisation [was Re: [beginner] What's wrong?] Rustom Mody <rustompmody@gmail.com> - 2016-04-08 11:04 -0700
                                      Re: Unicode normalisation [was Re: [beginner] What's wrong?] Dennis Lee Bieber <wlfraed@ix.netcom.com> - 2016-04-08 20:20 -0400
                                        Re: Unicode normalisation [was Re: [beginner] What's wrong?] alister <alister.ware@ntlworld.com> - 2016-04-09 08:30 +0000
                                          Re: Unicode normalisation [was Re: [beginner] What's wrong?] Ben Bacarisse <ben.usenet@bsb.me.uk> - 2016-04-09 14:43 +0100
                                            Re: Unicode normalisation [was Re: [beginner] What's wrong?] Ben Bacarisse <ben.usenet@bsb.me.uk> - 2016-04-09 15:34 +0100
                                              Re: Unicode normalisation [was Re: [beginner] What's wrong?] Dennis Lee Bieber <wlfraed@ix.netcom.com> - 2016-04-09 14:30 -0400
                                            Re: Unicode normalisation [was Re: [beginner] What's wrong?] Rustom Mody <rustompmody@gmail.com> - 2016-04-09 09:08 -0700
                                              Re: Unicode normalisation [was Re: [beginner] What's wrong?] Ben Bacarisse <ben.usenet@bsb.me.uk> - 2016-04-09 19:27 +0100
                                              Re: Unicode normalisation [was Re: [beginner] What's wrong?] Mark Lawrence <breamoreboy@yahoo.co.uk> - 2016-04-09 20:25 +0100
                                              Re: Unicode normalisation [was Re: [beginner] What's wrong?] Stephen Hansen <me@ixokai.io> - 2016-04-09 12:45 -0700
                                            Re: Unicode normalisation [was Re: [beginner] What's wrong?] Gregory Ewing <greg.ewing@canterbury.ac.nz> - 2016-04-10 20:35 +1200
                                      QWERTY was not designed to intentionally slow typists down (was: Unicode normalisation [was Re: [beginner] What's wrong?]) Ben Finney <ben+python@benfinney.id.au> - 2016-04-09 10:43 +1000
                                        Re: QWERTY was not designed to intentionally slow typists down (was: Unicode normalisation [was Re: [beginner] What's wrong?]) Steven D'Aprano <steve@pearwood.info> - 2016-04-09 13:28 +1000
                                          Re: QWERTY was not designed to intentionally slow typists down (was: Unicode normalisation [was Re: [beginner] What's wrong?]) Random832 <random832@fastmail.com> - 2016-04-09 11:44 -0400
                                          Re: QWERTY was not designed to intentionally slow typists down (was: Unicode normalisation [was Re: [beginner] What's wrong?]) Random832 <random832@fastmail.com> - 2016-04-09 11:53 -0400
                                            Re: QWERTY was not designed to intentionally slow typists down (was: Unicode normalisation [was Re: [beginner] What's wrong?]) Steven D'Aprano <steve@pearwood.info> - 2016-04-18 11:39 +1000
                                              Re: QWERTY was not designed to intentionally slow typists down (was: Unicode normalisation [was Re: [beginner] What's wrong?]) Random832 <random832@fastmail.com> - 2016-04-17 22:01 -0400
                                                Re: QWERTY was not designed to intentionally slow typists down (was: Unicode normalisation [was Re: [beginner] What's wrong?]) Steven D'Aprano <steve+comp.lang.python@pearwood.info> - 2016-04-18 17:21 +1000
                                                  Re: QWERTY was not designed to intentionally slow typists down Gregory Ewing <greg.ewing@canterbury.ac.nz> - 2016-04-18 21:17 +1200
                                              Re: QWERTY was not designed to intentionally slow typists down (was: Unicode normalisation [was Re: [beginner] What's wrong?]) Chris Angelico <rosuav@gmail.com> - 2016-04-18 12:09 +1000
                                              Re: QWERTY was not designed to intentionally slow typists down Michael Torrie <torriem@gmail.com> - 2016-04-17 21:50 -0600
                                              Re: QWERTY was not designed to intentionally slow typists down (was: Unicode normalisation [was Re: [beginner] What's wrong?]) Dennis Lee Bieber <wlfraed@ix.netcom.com> - 2016-04-18 00:06 -0400
                                          Re: QWERTY was not designed to intentionally slow typists down (was: Unicode normalisation [was Re: [beginner] What's wrong?]) Dennis Lee Bieber <wlfraed@ix.netcom.com> - 2016-04-09 14:52 -0400
                                            Re: QWERTY was not designed to intentionally slow typists down (was: Unicode normalisation [was Re: [beginner] What's wrong?]) pyotr filipivich <phamp@mindspring.com> - 2016-04-09 20:09 -0700
                                              Re: QWERTY was not designed to intentionally slow typists down (was: Unicode normalisation [was Re: [beginner] What's wrong?]) Ian Kelly <ian.g.kelly@gmail.com> - 2016-04-10 07:43 -0600
                                                Re: QWERTY was not designed to intentionally slow typists down (was: Unicode normalisation [was Re: [beginner] What's wrong?]) pyotr filipivich <phamp@mindspring.com> - 2016-04-10 19:14 -0700
                                      Re: QWERTY was not designed to intentionally slow typists down Mark Lawrence <breamoreboy@yahoo.co.uk> - 2016-04-09 20:13 +0100
                                        Re: QWERTY was not designed to intentionally slow typists down alister <alister.ware@ntlworld.com> - 2016-04-09 20:22 +0000
                                          Re: QWERTY was not designed to intentionally slow typists down Mark Lawrence <breamoreboy@yahoo.co.uk> - 2016-04-09 22:23 +0100
                                          Re: QWERTY was not designed to intentionally slow typists down Tim Golden <mail@timgolden.me.uk> - 2016-04-09 22:51 +0100
                                      Re: QWERTY was not designed to intentionally slow typists down Tim Golden <mail@timgolden.me.uk> - 2016-04-09 20:25 +0100
                                      Re: QWERTY was not designed to intentionally slow typists down Mark Lawrence <breamoreboy@yahoo.co.uk> - 2016-04-09 20:36 +0100
                                      Re: QWERTY was not designed to intentionally slow typists down Ethan Furman <ethan@stoneleaf.us> - 2016-04-09 14:33 -0700
                                      RE: [E] QWERTY was not designed to intentionally slow typists down (was: Unicode normalisation [was Re: [beginner] What's wrong?]) "Coll-Barth, Michael" <Michael.Coll-Barth@VerizonWireless.com> - 2016-04-09 13:31 -0400
                                  Re: Unicode normalisation [was Re: [beginner] What's wrong?] Steven D'Aprano <steve@pearwood.info> - 2016-04-09 04:44 +1000
                                    Re: Unicode normalisation [was Re: [beginner] What's wrong?] Marko Rauhamaa <marko@pacujo.net> - 2016-04-08 21:55 +0300
                                      Re: Unicode normalisation [was Re: [beginner] What's wrong?] Gregory Ewing <greg.ewing@canterbury.ac.nz> - 2016-04-10 21:25 +1200
                  Re: [beginner] What's wrong? Steven D'Aprano <steve@pearwood.info> - 2016-04-03 09:49 +1000
                    Re: [beginner] What's wrong? Mark Lawrence <breamoreboy@yahoo.co.uk> - 2016-04-03 01:26 +0100
                    Re: [beginner] What's wrong? Rustom Mody <rustompmody@gmail.com> - 2016-04-03 07:52 -0700
                      Re: [beginner] What's wrong? Michael Okuntsov <okuntsov.mikhail@yandex.ru> - 2016-04-03 22:24 +0600
                        Re: [beginner] What's wrong? Chris Angelico <rosuav@gmail.com> - 2016-04-04 02:28 +1000
                  Re: [beginner] What's wrong? Gregory Ewing <greg.ewing@canterbury.ac.nz> - 2016-04-03 16:57 +1200
                    Re: [beginner] What's wrong? Steven D'Aprano <steve@pearwood.info> - 2016-04-03 15:34 +1000
                Re: [beginner] What's wrong? Terry Reedy <tjreedy@udel.edu> - 2016-04-02 15:07 -0400
                  Re: [beginner] What's wrong? Marko Rauhamaa <marko@pacujo.net> - 2016-04-02 22:36 +0300
                    Re: [beginner] What's wrong? Michael Selik <michael.selik@gmail.com> - 2016-04-02 21:42 +0000
                      Re: [beginner] What's wrong? Steven D'Aprano <steve@pearwood.info> - 2016-04-03 10:48 +1000
                        Re: [beginner] What's wrong? Mark Lawrence <breamoreboy@yahoo.co.uk> - 2016-04-03 02:04 +0100
                          Re: [beginner] What's wrong? alister <alister.ware@ntlworld.com> - 2016-04-03 12:37 +0000
            Re: [beginner] What's wrong? Terry Reedy <tjreedy@udel.edu> - 2016-04-02 14:59 -0400
          Re: [beginner] What's wrong? Gregory Ewing <greg.ewing@canterbury.ac.nz> - 2016-04-03 16:43 +1200
        Re: [beginner] What's wrong? Dennis Lee Bieber <wlfraed@ix.netcom.com> - 2016-04-02 12:31 -0400
        Re: [beginner] What's wrong? Mark Lawrence <breamoreboy@yahoo.co.uk> - 2016-04-03 00:58 +0100
        Re: [beginner] What's wrong? sohcahtoa82@gmail.com - 2016-04-08 15:59 -0700
          Re: [beginner] What's wrong? Mark Lawrence <breamoreboy@yahoo.co.uk> - 2016-04-09 00:07 +0100
      Re: [beginner] What's wrong? Michael Torrie <torriem@gmail.com> - 2016-04-02 16:49 -0600
        Re: [beginner] What's wrong? Thomas 'PointedEars' Lahn <PointedEars@web.de> - 2016-04-03 10:12 +0200
      Re: [beginner] What's wrong? Mark Lawrence <breamoreboy@yahoo.co.uk> - 2016-04-04 15:04 +0100
        Re: [beginner] What's wrong? BartC <bc@freeuk.com> - 2016-04-04 15:51 +0100
      From email addresses sometimes strange on this list - was Re: [beginner] What's wrong? Michael Torrie <torriem@gmail.com> - 2016-04-04 16:55 -0600
      Re: From email addresses sometimes strange on this list - was Re: [beginner] What's wrong? Chris Angelico <rosuav@gmail.com> - 2016-04-05 08:58 +1000
      Re: From email addresses sometimes strange on this list - was Re: [beginner] What's wrong? Michael Torrie <torriem@gmail.com> - 2016-04-04 17:19 -0600

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#106767 — RE: [E] QWERTY was not designed to intentionally slow typists down (was: Unicode normalisation [was Re: [beginner] What's wrong?])

-----Original Message-----
From: Ben Finney

>> This is an often-repeated myth, with citations back as far as the 1970s.
>> It is false.

>> The design is intended to reduce jamming the print heads together, but the goal of this is not to reduce speed, but to enable *fast* typing.

>> It aims to maximise the frequency in which (English-language) text has consecutive letters alternating either side of the middle of the keyboard. This should thus reduce collisions of nearby heads — and hence
>> *increase* the effective typing speed that can be achieved on such a mechanical typewriter.

When I was in high school, mid-70s, the instructor, an elderly women, said the same thing, the placement of the keys were designed to minimize collision of the heads.  I don't remember what she called the various parts, but they all had technical names.  I vaguely remember hearing the myth of slowing down typists when Dvorak's keyboard became available for PCs, '80s(?), and that this 'new' layout removed that incumbrance.

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#106708 — Re: Unicode normalisation [was Re: [beginner] What's wrong?]

On Sat, 9 Apr 2016 03:21 am, Peter Pearson wrote:

> On Fri, 08 Apr 2016 16:00:10 +1000, Steven D'Aprano <steve@pearwood.info>
> wrote:
>> On Fri, 8 Apr 2016 02:51 am, Peter Pearson wrote:
>>> 
>>> The Unicode consortium was certifiably insane when it went into the
>>> typesetting business.
>>
>> They are not, and never have been, in the typesetting business. Perhaps
>> characters are not the only things easily confused *wink*
> 
> Defining codepoints that deal with appearance but not with meaning is
> going into the typesetting business.  Examples: ligatures, and spaces of
> varying widths with specific typesetting properties like being
> non-breaking.

Both of which are covered by the requirement that Unicode is capable of
representing legacy encodings/code pages.

Examples: MacRoman contains fl and fi ligatures, and NBSP. 

Non-breaking space is not so much a typesetting property as a semantic
property, that is, it deals with *meaning* (exactly what you suggested it
doesn't deal with). It is a space which doesn't break words.

Ligatures are a good example -- the Unicode consortium have explicitly
refused to add other ligatures beyond the handful needed for backwards
compatibility because they maintain that it is a typesetting issue that is
best handled by the font. There's even a FAQ about that very issue, and I
quote:

"The existing ligatures exist basically for compatibility and round-tripping
with non-Unicode character sets. Their use is discouraged. No more will be
encoded in any circumstances."

http://www.unicode.org/faq/ligature_digraph.html#Lig2


Unicode currently contains something of the order of one hundred and ten
thousand defined code points. I'm sure that if you went through the entire
list, with a sufficiently loose definition of "typesetting", you could
probably find some that exist only for presentation, and aren't covered by
the legacy encoding clause. So what? One swallow does not mean the season
is spring. Unicode makes an explicit rejection of being responsible for
typesetting. See their discussion on presentation forms:

http://www.unicode.org/faq/ligature_digraph.html#PForms

But I will grant you that sometimes there's a grey area between presentation
and semantics, and the Unicode consortium has to make a decision one way or
another. Those decisions may not always be completely consistent, and may
be driven by political and/or popular demand.

E.g. the Consortium explicitly state that stylistic issues such as bold,
italic, superscript etc are up to the layout engine or markup, and
shouldn't be part of the Unicode character set. They insist that they only
show representative glyphs for code points, and that font designers and
vendors are free (within certain limits) to modify the presentation as
desired. Nevertheless, there are specialist characters with distinct
formatting, and variant selectors for specifying a specific glyph, and
emoji modifiers for specifying skin tone.

But when you get down to fundamentals, character sets and alphabets have
always blurred the line between presentation and meaning. W ("double-u")
was, once upon a time, UU and & (ampersand) started off as a ligature
of "et" (Latin for "and"). There are always going to be cases where
well-meaning people can agree to disagree on whether or not adding the
character to Unicode was justified or not.




-- 
Steven

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#106709 — Re: Unicode normalisation [was Re: [beginner] What's wrong?]

Steven D'Aprano <steve@pearwood.info>:

> But when you get down to fundamentals, character sets and alphabets have
> always blurred the line between presentation and meaning. W ("double-u")
> was, once upon a time, UU

But as every Finnish-speaker now knows, "w" is only an old-fashioned
typographic variant of the glyph "v". We still have people who write
"Wirtanen" or "Waltari" to make their last names look respectable and
19th-centrury-ish.


Marko

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#106777 — Re: Unicode normalisation [was Re: [beginner] What's wrong?]

> Steven D'Aprano <steve@pearwood.info>:
> 
>>But when you get down to fundamentals, character sets and alphabets have
>>always blurred the line between presentation and meaning. W ("double-u")
>>was, once upon a time, UU

And before that, it was VV, because the Romans used V the
way we now use U, and didn't have a letter U.

When U first appeared, it was just a cursive style of writing
a V. According to this, it wasn't until the 18th century that
the English alphabet got both U and V as separate letters:

http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=147677

Apparently "uu"/"vv" came to be known as "double u" prior to
that, and the name has persisted.

-- 
Greg

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#106327

On Sun, 3 Apr 2016 03:12 am, Thomas 'PointedEars' Lahn wrote:

> Marko Rauhamaa wrote:
> 
>> Steven D'Aprano <steve@pearwood.info>:
>>> So you're saying that learning to be a fluent speaker of English is a
>>> pre-requisite of being a programmer?
>> 
>> No more than learning Latin is a prerequisite of being a doctor.
> 
> Full ACK.  Probably starting with the Industrial Revolution enabled by the
> improvements of the steam machine in England, English has become the
> /lingua franca/ of technology (even though the French often still
> disagree, preferring words like « ordinateur » and « octet » over
> “computer” and “byte”, respectively¹).  (With the Internet at the latest,
> then, it has also become the /lingua franca/ of science, although Latin
> terms are common in medicine.)

And this is a BAD THING. Monoculture is harmful, and science and technology
is becoming a monoculture: Anglo-American language expressing
Anglo-American ideas, regardless of the nationality of the scientist or
engineer.

During the heyday of the scientific revolution, the sciences and mathematics
were much diverse. Depending on your field, the professional scientist
needed at least a working knowledge of German, French, English and Latin,
possibly some Greek and Russian. Likewise for engineering.

I don't think that it is a coincidence that the great scientific theories
like relativity (both of them), quantum mechanics, evolution by natural
selection and continental drift had time to mature in smaller, national
communities before diffusing out to broader international communities.

Fortunately at least some people are aware of the problem and doing
something about it:

https://blog.stackoverflow.com/2014/02/cant-we-all-be-reasonable-and-speak-english/

Unlike the rest of us, Stackoverflow have actually run the numbers: 

10% of the world's programmers are in China
1.4% of their visits come from China

so either Chinese developers are so brilliant and knowledgeable that they
have no need of Stackoverflow, or they're unable to make use of it because
they cannot participate in English-only forums.


>> Nowadays software companies and communities are international. You never
>> know who needs to maintain your code. At work, I need to maintain code
>> that was created in Japan, with coworkers from all over the world. The
>> Japanese author had had a hard time with English, and made some
>> awkward naming choices, but had the common sense to use English-only
>> names in his code.
> 
> One will have a hard time finding a company or community, international or
> not, that does not have at least a basic knowledge of English included in
> what they require of a software developer.

Particularly if one keeps a Euro-centric perspective and doesn't look to
Asia or Brazil.



-- 
Steven

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#106333

On 03/04/2016 00:49, Steven D'Aprano wrote:
> On Sun, 3 Apr 2016 03:12 am, Thomas 'PointedEars' Lahn wrote:
>
>> Marko Rauhamaa wrote:
>>
>>> Steven D'Aprano <steve@pearwood.info>:
>>>> So you're saying that learning to be a fluent speaker of English is a
>>>> pre-requisite of being a programmer?
>>>
>>> No more than learning Latin is a prerequisite of being a doctor.
>>
>> Full ACK.  Probably starting with the Industrial Revolution enabled by the
>> improvements of the steam machine in England, English has become the
>> /lingua franca/ of technology (even though the French often still
>> disagree, preferring words like « ordinateur » and « octet » over
>> “computer” and “byte”, respectively¹).  (With the Internet at the latest,
>> then, it has also become the /lingua franca/ of science, although Latin
>> terms are common in medicine.)
>
> And this is a BAD THING. Monoculture is harmful, and science and technology
> is becoming a monoculture: Anglo-American language expressing
> Anglo-American ideas, regardless of the nationality of the scientist or
> engineer.
>
> During the heyday of the scientific revolution, the sciences and mathematics
> were much diverse. Depending on your field, the professional scientist
> needed at least a working knowledge of German, French, English and Latin,
> possibly some Greek and Russian. Likewise for engineering.
>
> I don't think that it is a coincidence that the great scientific theories
> like relativity (both of them), quantum mechanics, evolution by natural
> selection and continental drift had time to mature in smaller, national
> communities before diffusing out to broader international communities.
>
> Fortunately at least some people are aware of the problem and doing
> something about it:
>
> https://blog.stackoverflow.com/2014/02/cant-we-all-be-reasonable-and-speak-english/
>
> Unlike the rest of us, Stackoverflow have actually run the numbers:
>
> 10% of the world's programmers are in China
> 1.4% of their visits come from China
>
> so either Chinese developers are so brilliant and knowledgeable that they
> have no need of Stackoverflow, or they're unable to make use of it because
> they cannot participate in English-only forums.
>
>
>>> Nowadays software companies and communities are international. You never
>>> know who needs to maintain your code. At work, I need to maintain code
>>> that was created in Japan, with coworkers from all over the world. The
>>> Japanese author had had a hard time with English, and made some
>>> awkward naming choices, but had the common sense to use English-only
>>> names in his code.
>>
>> One will have a hard time finding a company or community, international or
>> not, that does not have at least a basic knowledge of English included in
>> what they require of a software developer.
>
> Particularly if one keeps a Euro-centric perspective and doesn't look to
> Asia or Brazil.
>

My mum was from Tredegar.  She was very upset because English newspaper 
correspondents were biased against her "boys", and because the selectors 
never even put her into the squad, let alone the starting lineup.

Of course this is completely irrelevant on the Python programming main 
mailing list, but it appears that any old crap is acceptable in the year 
2016.

A Bot, a Bot, any kingdom for a Bot.

-- 
My fellow Pythonistas, ask not what our language can do for you, ask
what you can do for our language.

Mark Lawrence

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#106363

On Sunday, April 3, 2016 at 5:19:33 AM UTC+5:30, Steven D'Aprano wrote:
> On Sun, 3 Apr 2016 03:12 am, Thomas 'PointedEars' Lahn wrote:
> 
> > Marko Rauhamaa wrote:
> > 
> >> Steven D'Aprano :
> >>> So you're saying that learning to be a fluent speaker of English is a
> >>> pre-requisite of being a programmer?
> >> 
> >> No more than learning Latin is a prerequisite of being a doctor.
> > 
> > Full ACK.  Probably starting with the Industrial Revolution enabled by the
> > improvements of the steam machine in England, English has become the
> > /lingua franca/ of technology (even though the French often still
> > disagree, preferring words like << ordinateur >> and << octet >> over
> > "computer" and "byte", respectively¹).  (With the Internet at the latest,
> > then, it has also become the /lingua franca/ of science, although Latin
> > terms are common in medicine.)
> 
> And this is a BAD THING. Monoculture is harmful, and science and technology
> is becoming a monoculture: Anglo-American language expressing
> Anglo-American ideas, regardless of the nationality of the scientist or
> engineer.

I think you are ending making the opposite point of what you seem to want to make
Yeah... ok monoculture is a bad thing.
Is python(3) helping towards a 'polyculture'?

To see this consider some app like Word or Gimp that has significant 
functionality and has a history over 20 years.

So let us say some 10 years ago it was internationalized.
This consists of 
1. Rewriting the 'strings' into gettext (or whatever) form along with other
program reorgs
2. Translators actually translating the 'strings'

Or take a modern OS like Windows or Ubuntu -- from the first install screen
we can pick a language and then it will be localized to that

To really localize python one would have to
1. Localize the keywords
2. Localize all module names
3. Localize all the help strings
4. Localize the entire stuff up at https://docs.python.org/3/
5. ...

That is probably one or two orders of magnitude more work than
localizing gimp or Word

So if this is the full goal how far does
"You can now spell (or misspell) your python identifiers in any language of your choice"
go towards that goal?

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#106374

03.04.2016 20:52, Rustom Mody пишет:

> To really localize python one would have to
> 1. Localize the keywords
> 2. Localize all module names
> 3. Localize all the help strings
> 4. Localize the entire stuff up at https://docs.python.org/3/
> 5. ...
>
> That is probably one or two orders of magnitude more work than
> localizing gimp or Word
>
> So if this is the full goal how far does
> "You can now spell (or misspell) your python identifiers in any language of your choice"
> go towards that goal?
>

As an OP, can I participate in the discussion? Here in Russia we have a 
monstrous bookkeeping system called 1C-Predpriyatiye that is used by 
almost all firms and organizations, from kiosks to huge factories. This 
system has a Basic-like language with keywords, module names etc. 
localized in Russian language, but it has also English, German, and 
Ukrainian localizations. I don't want to say that common programming 
languages should be like this, but here we have an example that it can 
be done.

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#106377

On Mon, Apr 4, 2016 at 2:24 AM, Michael Okuntsov
<okuntsov.mikhail@yandex.ru> wrote:
> As an OP, can I participate in the discussion? Here in Russia we have a
> monstrous bookkeeping system called 1C-Predpriyatiye that is used by almost
> all firms and organizations, from kiosks to huge factories. This system has
> a Basic-like language with keywords, module names etc. localized in Russian
> language, but it has also English, German, and Ukrainian localizations. I
> don't want to say that common programming languages should be like this, but
> here we have an example that it can be done.

Absolutely you can participate! And thank you. That's exactly the sort
of thing I'm talking about; you should be able to script that in
Russian if your business is primarily Russian.

ChrisA

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#106346

Thomas 'PointedEars' Lahn wrote:
> even though the French often still disagree, 
> preferring words like « ordinateur » and « octet » over “computer” and 
> “byte”, respectively

To be fair, "octet" is a slightly more precise term than
"byte", meaning exactly 8 bits (whereas "byte" could
theoretically mean something else depending on the
context).

There's no excuse for "ordinateur", though. :-)

-- 
Greg

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#106349

On Sun, 3 Apr 2016 02:57 pm, Gregory Ewing wrote:

> Thomas 'PointedEars' Lahn wrote:
>> even though the French often still disagree,
>> preferring words like « ordinateur » and « octet » over “computer” and
>> “byte”, respectively
> 
> To be fair, "octet" is a slightly more precise term than
> "byte", meaning exactly 8 bits (whereas "byte" could
> theoretically mean something else depending on the
> context).

"Theoretically"?

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2098149/what-platforms-have-something-other-than-8-bit-char






-- 
Steven

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#106303

On 4/2/2016 12:44 PM, Marko Rauhamaa wrote:

> Nowadays software companies and communities are international.

Grade school classrooms, especially pre-high school, are not.

 > You never know who needs to maintain your code.

For one-off school assignments, nobody other than the author.

 > At work, I need to maintain code
> that was created in Japan, with coworkers from all over the world. The
> Japanese author had had a hard time with English, and made some
> awkward naming choices, but had the common sense to use English-only
> names in his code.

Could not have been worse than semi-random ascii like x3tu9.

> I also think log file timestamps should be expressed in UTC.

I agree.  Any translation to local time should be in the viewer.  I 
presume this is already true for email and news message timestamps.

-- 
Terry Jan Reedy

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#106307

Terry Reedy <tjreedy@udel.edu>:

> On 4/2/2016 12:44 PM, Marko Rauhamaa wrote:
>
>> Nowadays software companies and communities are international.
>
> Grade school classrooms, especially pre-high school, are not.

Parenthetically, English teachers in Finland have been happy with how
teenage boys' English grades have gone up with the advent of online
gaming.

   High school boys get more top scores in English than girls. According
   to a recent master's thesis, the most important causal factor for the
   boys' success is spending a lot of time playing computer games. An
   English language professor wants to raise awareness about the role of
   games for language skills.

   <URL: http://yle.fi/uutiset/pojat_kiilaavat_tyttojen_ohi_englannin_
   kielessa_tietokonepelien_ansiosta/5450679>


Marko

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#106314

On Sat, Apr 2, 2016, 3:40 PM Marko Rauhamaa <marko@pacujo.net> wrote:

> Terry Reedy <tjreedy@udel.edu>:
>
> > On 4/2/2016 12:44 PM, Marko Rauhamaa wrote:
> >
> >> Nowadays software companies and communities are international.
> >
> > Grade school classrooms, especially pre-high school, are not.
>
> Parenthetically, English teachers in Finland have been happy with how
> teenage boys' English grades have gone up with the advent of online
> gaming.
>
>    High school boys get more top scores in English than girls. According
>    to a recent master's thesis, the most important causal factor for the
>    boys' success is spending a lot of time playing computer games. An
>    English language professor wants to raise awareness about the role of
>    games for language skills.
>

Gaming also helps your reaction time. Normally 0.3 ms, but 0.1 ms for top
gamers. And fighter pilots.

>

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#106335

On Sun, 3 Apr 2016 07:42 am, Michael Selik wrote:

> Gaming also helps your reaction time. Normally 0.3 ms, but 0.1 ms for top
> gamers. And fighter pilots.


Does gaming help reaction time, or do only people with fast reaction times
become top gamers?

Personally, in my experience gaming hurts reaction time. I ask people a
question, and they don't reply for a week or at all, because they're too
busy playing games all day.


-- 
Steven

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#106336

On 03/04/2016 01:48, Steven D'Aprano wrote:
> On Sun, 3 Apr 2016 07:42 am, Michael Selik wrote:
>
>> Gaming also helps your reaction time. Normally 0.3 ms, but 0.1 ms for top
>> gamers. And fighter pilots.
>
> Does gaming help reaction time, or do only people with fast reaction times
> become top gamers?
>
> Personally, in my experience gaming hurts reaction time. I ask people a
> question, and they don't reply for a week or at all, because they're too
> busy playing games all day.
>

I must agree.  When you're trying to get the ball away, and 23 stone of 
bone and muscle smashes into you, that slows your reaction time.  I am 
of course referring to the sport of rugby, not that silly "World 
Series", which takes part in only one country, where for some reason 
unknown to me they wear huge quantities of armour and need oxygen masks 
after they've run a few yards.  What would happen to the poor little 
darlings if they had to spend the entire match on the pitch?

-- 
My fellow Pythonistas, ask not what our language can do for you, ask
what you can do for our language.

Mark Lawrence

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#106359

On Sun, 03 Apr 2016 02:04:05 +0100, Mark Lawrence wrote:

> On 03/04/2016 01:48, Steven D'Aprano wrote:
>> On Sun, 3 Apr 2016 07:42 am, Michael Selik wrote:
>>
>>> Gaming also helps your reaction time. Normally 0.3 ms, but 0.1 ms for
>>> top gamers. And fighter pilots.
>>
>> Does gaming help reaction time, or do only people with fast reaction
>> times become top gamers?
>>
>> Personally, in my experience gaming hurts reaction time. I ask people a
>> question, and they don't reply for a week or at all, because they're
>> too busy playing games all day.
>>
>>
> I must agree.  When you're trying to get the ball away, and 23 stone of
> bone and muscle smashes into you, that slows your reaction time.  I am
> of course referring to the sport of rugby, not that silly "World
> Series", which takes part in only one country, where for some reason
> unknown to me they wear huge quantities of armour and need oxygen masks
> after they've run a few yards.  What would happen to the poor little
> darlings if they had to spend the entire match on the pitch?

while i agree with your sentiments you have a few minor inacuracies

the "World Series" has nothing to do with Poofs In Pads, it is actually 
Rounders. 



-- 
Real programmers don't write in BASIC.  Actually, no programmers write in
BASIC after reaching puberty.

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#106302

On 4/2/2016 11:07 AM, Marko Rauhamaa wrote:

> While it is fine for Python to support Unicode to its fullest, I don't
> think it's a good idea for a programmer to use non-English identifiers.

Non-English identifiers can written, at least in romanized versions, in 
ascii.

> The (few) keywords are in English anyway. Imagine reading code like
> this:
>
>      for oppilas in luokka:
>          if oppilas.hylätty():
>              oppilas.ilmoita(oppilas.koetulokset)
>
> which looks nauseating whether you are an English-speaker or
> Finnish-speaker.

Your sense of nausea is different from others, so speak for yourself (as 
you did in the first sentence -- "I don't ...").  People were happily 
and routinely writing thing like the above (minus the accented char) in 
2.x.  I guess they must have kept your code out of your sight.

-- 
Terry Jan Reedy

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#106344

Chris Angelico wrote:
> Yep! And the letters (thorn and eth) survive in a very few languages
> (Icelandic, notably). Fortunately, Python 3 lets you use it in
> identifiers.

This suggests an elegant solution to the problem of whether
"python" should refer to Python 2 or Python 3. The Python 3
link should be "pyþon"!

-- 
Greg

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#106294

On Sat, 2 Apr 2016 19:15:36 +1100, Chris Angelico <rosuav@gmail.com>
declaimed the following:

>On Sat, Apr 2, 2016 at 3:27 PM, Random832 <random832@fastmail.com> wrote:
>> On Fri, Apr 1, 2016, at 19:29, Michael Selik wrote:
>>> Humans have always had trouble with this, in many contexts. I remember
>>> being annoyed at folks saying the year 2000 was the first year of the new
>>> millennium, rather than 2001. They'd forgotten the Gregorian calendar
>>> starts from AD 1.
>>
>> Naturally, this means the first millennium was only 999 years long, and
>> all subsequent millennia were 1000 years long. (Whereas "millennium" is
>> defined as the set of all years of a given era for a given integer k
>> where y // 1000 == k. How else would you define it?)
>>
>> And if you want to get technical, the gregorian calendar starts from
>> some year no earlier than 1582, depending on the country. The year
>> numbering system has little to do with the calendar type - your
>> assertion in fact regards the BC/AD year numbering system, which was
>> invented by Bede.
>>
>> The astronomical year-numbering system, which does contain a year zero
>> (and uses negative numbers rather than a reverse-numbered "BC" era), and
>> is incidentally used by ISO 8601, was invented by Jacques Cassini in the
>> 17th century.
>>
>
>Are you sure? Because I'm pretty sure these folks were already talking about BC.

	Bede's BC/AD goes back to circa 700AD. It is the use of negative years
for astronomical counting that is circa 1650AD
>
>http://xenohistorian.faithweb.com/holybook/quotes/YK.html

	And that I'll take as something suited for the first of April... It's
almost on par with an old story (in Asimov's I think) on why the pyramids
were behind schedule -- among other things, the pile of government mandated
documentation, on clay tablets of course, was becoming larger than the
pyramid being built; the older records (on the bottom of the stack) were
decomposing from the pressure, etc. If I recall, they discover cuneiform as
more condense than hieroglyphics, and then learn of papyrus/ink (but then
have to support an entire industry of workers to transcribe the old clay
tablets...)


-- 
	Wulfraed                 Dennis Lee Bieber         AF6VN
    wlfraed@ix.netcom.com    HTTP://wlfraed.home.netcom.com/

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