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Non-English Programming Languages?

Posted by Cliff on from the localized-keywords dept.

jjohnson asks: "As a coder I've been exposed to a lot of programming languages, big and small, and they're all in (pseudo) English, reflecting their invention and development in English speaking countries (or to gain traction in English speaking countries, such as Ruby). Of course, there's no reason a programming language couldn't be developed in Russian, using a cyrillic character set; or Chinese, using kanji; or Japanese, using hiragana. All three of those nations have big/advanced enough developer communities to justify the development of native-tongue programming languages, which have the obvious benefit of not requiring their developers to learn/code in a foreign language. What non-English programming languages exist, and how do they compare?"

13 of 191 comments (clear)

  1. Google by marco0009 · · Score: 4, Informative

    Thank you google for your infinite wisdom:
    http://www.sciencedaily.com/encyclopedia/non_engli sh_based_programming_languages

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    1. Re:Google by Profane+MuthaFucka · · Score: 3, Informative

      proper link

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  2. lots o' dupes today by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    original 'ask slashdot' article'

    1. Re:lots o' dupes today by y0bhgu0d · · Score: 1, Informative

      #1 - Not the same article. Similar, yes, but not the same article.

      #2 - That was posted nearly 4 years ago. Not only may views have changed, but maybe there have been new developments in non-english programming languages.

      I, for one, tire of the "nyuk nyuk too many dupes on slashdot" comments. Life is a cycle, things are going to repeat. Get over it.

  3. Translated Visual Basic by Scarblac · · Score: 2, Informative

    Ah, apparently the submitter hasn't heard of the horror that is (was, I hope) translated VBA. If you had a Dutch version of Office, your Visual Basic was Dutch as well. That is, the language itself. A FOR..NEXT loop was something like a VAN..NAAR loop (I have only seen this stuff, not coded in it).

    I can't find the right Google keywords at the moment to find an example, but it was horrible, and of course totally incompatible with other versions...

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  4. None English programming languages? by LWATCDR · · Score: 4, Informative

    As far as I know there are none.
    The reason is pretty simple. English is probably the most commonly spoken language for business and science on the earth today. Before someone says that there are x billion Chinese yes they are but there are many dialects of Chinese and also of Hindi. Also a very large percentage of the Computer industry is centered in the US. I just do not think that there is any other language that has so many educated speakers. If you want to be an Airline pilot in any country in the world you must speak english. Yes a Russian airline pilot landing in Germany will speak to the towner in english. Or back in the 1800s French was the language of Science. For now it is English that is more or less the universal language.

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    1. Re:None English programming languages? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

      There are two distinct writing styles - Traditional and Simplified characters. Simplified characters are used in the People's Republic of China (Mainland), and Traditional characters are used in Hong Kong, Taiwan, and abroad. Reading one does not mean that you can read the other.

    2. Re:None English programming languages? by Prior+Restraint · · Score: 2, Informative

      In French, though, 'C++' is 'Ç++'.

      Why would they do that? The letter "C" in French is pronounced much like the word "say" in English. The only point of the cedilla is to soften what would otherwise be a "hard c," such as in façade and François. "C" by itself already has a soft sound.

  5. Re:When you mention lisp by notfancy · · Score: 3, Informative

    CAR (Contents of Address Register) and CDR (Contents of Decrement Register) are effectively mnemonics for what we call nowadays (in ML or Haskell) the hd (head) and the tl (tail) of a list.

    But, since in Latin head is caput and tail is cauda, you could say that CAR stands for CApite Regesta (literally, "what's written at the head") and CDR for CauDa Regesta ("what is written at the tail")! The Classicist purists among you will probably find that a better non-etymology would be "CApitis Recensio" and "CauDae Recensio", but who's worrying anyway. Then of course, you have that CONS is also Latin for "CONStruo".

  6. Japanese programming language by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    The Mind programming language, which is in Japanese, was recently discussed on Kuro5hin. Apparently the syntax reads like natural declarative Japanese.

  7. Programming in a Mother Tongue by Mike+Wilson · · Score: 3, Informative

    If I remember correctly, Mitarou Namiki wrote a paper exploring this. The reference seems to be:

    T.Souya, E.Hayakawa, M.Honma, H.Fukushima, M.Namiki, N.Takahashi and M.Nakagawa, "Programming in a Mother Tongue: Philosophy, Implementation, Practice and Effect", The 15th Annual International Computer Software & Application Conference, pp.705-721, 1991.9

    See his 1991 papers listing and his lab's website.

    I talked with him about it ten years ago. I have a copy of the paper or maybe a similar one somewhere, but it's in japanese and I never allocated the hours I need to read it.

  8. Re:Actually ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    It all depends on your compiler. I found one that compiled IBM graphics characters.

  9. lisp can't be Latin by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    lisp is based on Church's lambda calculus and lambda is a greek letter.