Re: Unicode in source (Was Re: if vs. when vs. and: style question)

[Pascal J. Bourguignon]

"Gian Uberto Lauri" <saint@eng.it> writes:

> Pascal J. Bourguignon writes:
>  > Because it's easier to learn English and easier to type quantity instead
>  > of quantita, than to learn 8000+ ideograms and type one of them.
>
> Not an absolute truth, especially if those ideograms are the way your
> mother tongue is written, or if you English skills are poor (you can't
> think in English) or simply you feel a bit too much colonized by the
> English language :).

Granted, but this is a difficult question.

- most programming languages have English keywords and libraries.

- it is difficult for me to constantly switch between languages in
  programs, keywords in English, identifiers and comments in French.

- writing identifiers and comments in a national language makes it more
  difficult for international cooperation.  

  This is not necessarily a point in favor of using English: you may
  want to avoid aliens to have access to your national software.  But if
  you intend to have your startup bought out, or if you're developing
  open source software and expect international cooperation, then you
  will get better results using the international language.

- one could use a programming language based on the national language,
  where writing identifiers and comments inthe national language would
  be natural. (There have been such languages using Chinese, Russian,
  French; recently somebody designed one in Arabic
  http://nas.sr/%D9%82%D9%84%D8%A8/ ). 
  
  But again, with the internet, if you want internationnal cooperation,
  this wouldn't be a good idea.  On the other hand if you want to
  restrict it to your nation, then it's definitely a good idea.


> I admit that most Italian programmer would write qta to save typing ;).

Or we could use Latin or Esperanto, or Interlingua, or Lojban or
https://xkcd.com/927/ 
Damn!


https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9270515

-- 
__Pascal Bourguignon__                 http://www.informatimago.com/
“The factory of the future will have only two employees, a man and a
dog. The man will be there to feed the dog. The dog will be there to
keep the man from touching the equipment.” -- Carl Bass CEO Autodesk