From: MikkelFJ <mikkelfj-anti-spam@...>
Date: 2003-03-07T18:35:30+09:00
Subject: Re: was Re: Ruby and Python related in Cyrillic ;-)


"Gennady" <bystr@mac.com> wrote in message
news:54624900-5067-11D7-A74D-0003939AEA24@mac.com...

> necessary abstraction level for algorithmic exercises. I remember
> looking at a COBOL program (COBOL is the only language I know that have
> Russian implementation with all keywords translated). In the very least
> it was perceived as funny and awkward.

Indeed. Someone got the brilliant idea of translation Visual Basic for
Applications (VBA) to all sorts of langauges. That whats highly useful
(not), especially when sharing macros in international orginazations.
Even now, when this idea has been dumped, we still struggle with "." and ","
as decimal separators. It's not useful to have these sorts of errors in a
spreadsheet.
I'd be happy to dump the danish comma separator for the enlish "." and for
all practical purposes we already have. But then the american date format is
hopeless - so it's difficult to settle for a single locale.

> Even now when I know English
> pretty well (I hope), I never think of keywords (like for, while, if,
> do, etc.) literally, rather as mathematical notations. And it helps a
> lot (again, IMHO).

True - but APL didn't really take off - it was too cryptic. You need some
tie to natural languages - wether it is you native langauge or some other
langauge.
Also, the extensions, i.e. function and class names also need to be named
sensibly.

Actually we have a well developed system of danish words for mathematical
notations but danish is too small a language to warrant translation of all
relevant mathematical texts, so even here english is in common use. The
mostly symbolic nature of mathematics does not solve the need to communicate
across borders.

Mikkel