in reply to Re: Polyglot Challenges
in thread Polyglot Challenges

For myself, I have long ago adopted using English language only for code (including comments).

Interesting. You are not the first German person I have heard who has said that. Being a Canadian working in German I occasionally come accross code that is written in german. I find it very strange to see german words and abbreviations intermixed with the english of the underlying langauge.

I suspect that there are relationships between cognitive models that are beneficial for computing (and indeed most likely many other fields as well) and cognitive models that are beneficial for the language we speak. It seems to me that in the history of computing there are a disproportionate number of Germanic speakers (including English). While this could be accident of opporuntiuty I personally suspect not. On an off note, it also make me suspect that we will see the Arabic nations, historically very strong in mathematics and computation, achieve a great deal once the conditions are right. Lets not forget that Algorithm is an arabic word, and the numbers that we use are as well.


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demerphq

<Elian> And I do take a kind of perverse pleasure in having an OO assembly language...

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Re: Polyglot Challenges
by crenz (Priest) on Apr 21, 2003 at 19:39 UTC

    I find it very strange to see german words and abbreviations intermixed with the english of the underlying langauge.

    I see you know what I mean :). Usually, the more formal knowledge and experience a programmer has, the less he will use non-English language in his code.

    I suspect that there are relationships between cognitive models that are beneficial for computing (...) and cognitive models that are beneficial for the language we speak

    I do think this is quite true. The language we use shapes our thoughts. Another example are Indian languages; I've heard Hindi has a rather mathematical structure as well and I definitely can see it in the Indians that I know. These are all just tendencies, of course. Just as growing up in a family of musicians doesn't make you a musician automatically -- but in a lot of cases, it helps.

    I'm not sure about the disproportionate number of German speakers in computing. However, what does come to mind is that we both have a strong history in philosophy (as diverse as Luther, Kant, Nietzsche and Marx) and in construction of calculation machines (lots of people messing around with these in Germany, e.g. Philipp Matthäus Hahn in the 17th century, and up to Konrad Zuse, who built the first binary digital computer).

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Re: Re: Re: Polyglot Challenges
by zby (Vicar) on Apr 22, 2003 at 13:05 UTC
    I don't find the habit of mixing languages disturbing. It looks a bit ridiculous - but it might be quite usefull. With it you have much more expressive power than when you stick strictly to English.

    That said I would not recommend it - since there is rarely the situation where your code will be read only by people speaking your language.

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      Yes, for example having the variables and code in an English-like form and the comments in another language entirely. This is useful when the docs are supposed to be written in the comment language.

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      Allolex

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