From: Albert Wagner <alwagner@...>
Date: 2002-07-27T00:25:25+09:00
Subject: Re: How do you think of...

Questions like this always intrigue me because the various replies seem to say 
something beyond the obvious.  I've read in some linguistics literature that 
one of the reasons most adults have trouble learning foreign languages is 
that their first language, their "native" language, is a filter that all new 
languages must pass through to reach their internal lexer.  A translation 
must always be made into native language and only then is meaning assigned.  
I don't know if this is actually true.  But I suspect it is close to the 
truth.  

As programmers, I think that we subconsciously have such a "native" 
programming language, i.e. a sort of pseudo-code that we think with;  that is 
composed of snippets of our favorite aspects of  abstract languages, real and 
imagined.

So that, these kinds of questions invoke a "native" language response.