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Extinction Of Human Languages Affects Programming?

Posted by simoniker on from the look-back-to-look-forward dept.

Tanmay Kudyadi writes "An article from NewScientist.com reports that half of all human languages will have disappeared by the end of the century, as smaller societies are assimilated into national and global cultures. This may be great news if one is looking at a common standard for communication, but it dosen't help those designing the next generation of programming languages. For example, there's an extremely strong link between Panini's Grammar and computer science (PDF link), and with every language lost, there is a possibility that we may have missed an opportunity at improving the underlying heuristics."

10 of 626 comments (clear)

  1. This ruins my day. by grub · · Score: 5, Funny


    Well.. that dashes all hope I had for finding a papyrus re-issue of "Babylonian C for Dummies". It's been out of print for millennia.

    --
    Trolling is a art,
    1. Re:This ruins my day. by CyberSp00k · · Score: 5, Funny

      Babylonian C was a hardware language, silly. It was produced on clay tablets. No one is ever going to trust anything that matters to papyrus.

      --
      Spiritus ex Machina
      "The universe is not only stranger than we imagine, it's stranger than we CAN imagine."
    2. Re:This ruins my day. by jasoncart · · Score: 5, Funny

      Try archive.org or the Google cache.

    3. Re:This ruins my day. by dankney · · Score: 5, Funny

      Have you checked eBay?

    4. Re:This ruins my day. by ackthpt · · Score: 5, Funny
      Babylonian C was a hardware language, silly. It was produced on clay tablets

      Cuneiform is awl write!

      --

      A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
  2. Languages disappearing?? by bckrispi · · Score: 5, Funny

    Hmm, that's doubleplus ungood...

    --
    Xenon, where's my money? -Borno
  3. Panini? by John+Girouard · · Score: 5, Funny

    ...strong link between Panini's Grammar and computer science

    I knew sandwiches were related to programming!

  4. Um shutup by tomstdenis · · Score: 5, Funny

    How exactly is C or Pascal based off a spoken language?

    while (alive)

    while (lust && !state(HUNGER)) {
    seek_women(HIGH_PRIORITY);
    if (found) {
    sex_up(BYPAIRS)
    sleep();
    } else {
    sex_up(MANUALLY);
    watch(CARTOONS);
    }
    }

    if (state(HUNGER))
    {
    seek_food();
    if (found) {
    chow_down_like_no_tommorow();
    } else {
    slaughter(NEIGHBOUR);
    chow_down_like_is_tommorow();
    }
    }

    }

    Oh I get it ....

    --
    Someday, I'll have a real sig.
  5. New Languages by knarfling · · Score: 5, Funny

    On the plus side, there are new languages showing up all the time. Klingon, Vulcan, Romulan, Cardassian .... Imagine the programming possibilities!!!

    --
    Great civilizations have lived and died on false theories. Don't mess up mine with a few facts.
  6. Re:Hard To Believe by ackthpt · · Score: 5, Funny

    Fer ah=1 ta 5
    ya'll gosub thingamajig(ah)
    iffen error then goto goldangit
    next ah

    --

    A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar