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JavaScript For the Rest of Us

Posted by timothy on from the error-messages-go-universal dept.

First time accepted submitter my2iu writes "The JavaScript programming language is both widely available and very powerful. Unfortunately, since only 6% of the world's population are native English speakers, the other 94% of the world are forced to learn English before they can start using JavaScript. Babylscript is an open source project that aims to translate JavaScript to all the world's languages, including French, Spanish, Chinese, and Arabic. The project has recently completed its 12th translation, enough so that the native languages of over 50% of the world's population are now supported!"

5 of 285 comments (clear)

  1. VBA? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Because having local-language versions worked out so well for VBA - and that isn't even on the internet.

  2. And this is different...??? by Grashnak · · Score: 5, Insightful

    How is this different than every other programming language I've ever encountered? And doesn't writing javascript in, say, Arabic, just make it inaccessible to 99% of the people who like look at your code?

    --
    Life needs more saving throws.
    1. Re:And this is different...??? by UnknownSoldier · · Score: 5, Insightful

      > I see this as an interesting idea. Why should I write "if" instead of "jos" (i.e. Finnish)? The latter is easier for Finns to understand and learn, especially if they are very young (or very old).

      Except this idea was designed by people who have no clue how interpreters/compilers do their parsing.

      So now I have to add *all possible potential translation words* as reserved for identifiers??

      Using your Finnish example...

      "English";
      var jos = 1; // OK, jos is not a reserved word IN English
      if( jos ) console.log( "jos = " + jos );

      "Finnish";
      var jos = 1; // FAIL, jos is reserved as 'if' in Finnish
      jos( jos ) console.log( "jos = " + jos ); // ERROR: AMBIGUOUS

  3. Forced to learn English to learn Javascript?! by bool2 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Javascript keywords are English words but it's quite a leap to suggest you need to know English to learn Javascript! In fact, it might be an advantage to have the keywords as foreign words because they represent abstract concepts that ought to be considered apart from their real world meanings. IMHO.

  4. No by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The programming language is the language, not the english language. You need to learn keywords, they could be klingon, do not need to make any sense for you. On the other hand, documentations are usually written in english.