

Non-English-based programming languages - arem
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-English-based_programming_languages

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hernan7
Back in the '80s, at the University of Buenos Aires the first intro to
algorithms course was taught using the Spanish-based TIMBA language. It was a
kind of Pascal/ pseudocode language that we used to program an imaginary one-
armed robot to perform some tasks on a deck of cards. We would write a program
for sorting the cards by number, or pick all cards with the number 2, things
like that. I think it was a good idea for those of us not familiar with either
computers or the English language.

The language didn't have a running implementation that I know of; it was all
paper-based.

("Timba" means "gambling" in Argentinian slang -- for some reason writing
TIMBA programs always reminded me of the late Rene Lavand, the one-armed
Argentinian magician.)

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jws
I think that the natural language of the 30 or so keywords that define a
language does not pose a serious barrier.

Consider Lisp's cons, car, and cdr: these are not part of anyone's natural
language yet they survive just fine.

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qw
I don't know if Microsoft still does it, but in the 90s they actually
translated VBA in the Office pack to the local languages... I know it was
included in the version before Office 95, but it may have been included in the
95 version as well.

I still have nightmares of the horrors of programming Excel 5.0 using the
localized basic dialect. There's something fundamentally wrong about a non-
English basic

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neilo
I suppose it's only right they focused on HUMAN languages, otherwise you'd see
machine language up there. Most forms of assembly have always felt like a
different language to me ...

Someone needs to invent "gibberish" or "crazy cat lady". What kinds of
humorous programming languages are there? The only one I can think of off the
top of my head is INTERCAL

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twopoint718
Whitespace, Shakespeare, LOLCode, Homespring (the Salmon-oriented programming
language), and of course, Visual Basic.

Edit: the "Visual Basic" was my attempt at a joke, but then I googled in
"Invisible Basic", thinking that some crafty hacker out for a laugh would have
made such a thing. Unfortunately, I don't think this
<http://invisiblebasic.sourceforge.net/> is a joke.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whitespace_(programming_languag...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whitespace_\(programming_language\))

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shakespeare_(programming_langua...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shakespeare_\(programming_language\))

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LOLCODE>

[http://xeny.net/files/Homespring-Proposed-Language-
Standard....](http://xeny.net/files/Homespring-Proposed-Language-Standard.pdf)
[PDF link]

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ShabbyDoo
IIRC, Microsoft used to release localized versions of their IDEs (not the
compilers themselves), but they weren't very popular as most people outside
English-speaking countries perceived them to be somehow substandard. I believe
they were also shipped after the English versions, so early adopters were
forced into the 'merican way.

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ashleyw
BrainFuck indeed:

    
    
        http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brainfuck
    

…wow!

~~~
huhtenberg
Heh .. just wait until you discover a subtle elegance and deceptive simplicity
of Petrovich.

<http://www.dangermouse.net/esoteric/petrovich.html>

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jwilliams
They don't seem to distinguish between the language itself and the API. I'd
think for many languages the core keywords wouldn't be too hard to
translate... Translating the .NET API would be a bigger call (there seem to be
examples of this there).

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barredo
How many words a non-native-english speaker programmer (like me) has to learn?
I bet no more than 30-50.

It's not a a problem for 99% of programmers, so that's the reason most of
languages stayed in English without the need of being translated

~~~
jwilliams
Yeah I agree - Their use in a programming language is generally so abstract.
Knowing the words "for" or "do" doesn't really help a whole lot in
understanding a loop construct.

This isn't true for the API though - the API contains a much greater lexicon.

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grosales
Lexico seems cool, might have to try it out.

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op
Long live Rapira!

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bianco
The English language is certainly one of the most flexible ones, on the
positive side, and one of loosest ones, on the negative side.

In English, even the most stupid thoughts sound right, just because of the
language-culture itself.

So, it would certainly be very exciting to have e.g. a perfect programming
language, expressing itself in say Arabic or Hebrew; but, on the other side,
computers and real intelligence (or: AI and Real Human Intelligence) are so
far away from each other, that it really doesn't matter how 'stupid' the
programming-language-language is...

~~~
jwilliams
_In English, even the most stupid thoughts sound right, just because of the
language-culture itself._

Well - that certainly doesn't sound right to me.

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bianco
You got it all wrong: native English folks should be forbidden to vote on this
comment.

Anyway, believe me or not: you English ones are certainly the most ignorant in
culture anyways; all of non english folks around the world would agree on
this...

~~~
godDLL
I disagree. Я несогласен. לא נכון.

