Re: "Near Miss" error handling?

Ralph Corderoy <ralph@inputplus.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>> I think most programmers, regardless of their native language, use
>> English identifier names. Not all, but most.
>
>I could believe that to be the case in Scandinavian countries, where
>English is widely spoken, but my experience working for Thomson CSF in
>France a few years suggested exactly the opposite...


My understanding is that the French are the single substantial
exception to the original comment. Most others -- even the ones with
different alphabets -- tend to sigh and grit their teeth and use
English or something resembling it, but in France that is considered
intolerable, er excuse me intolérable.


In Algol 68, the loop delimiters were do...od everywhere, even Russia
and China, except France, where they were faire...fait (which is
actually rather elegant) (that translates roughly to "do...done").
--
When failure is not an option, success | Henry Spencer henry@spsystems.net
can get expensive. -- Peter Stibrany | (aka henry@zoo.toronto.edu)
[Some years ago I interviewed for a compiler job at ACRI, a
Euroboondoggle in Lyon that was trying to build a supercomputer. The
working language was English, since the staff came from all over the
place, but there were of course a lot of French folks, who didn't know
what to make of me because they'd never met an American before who spoke
French. Sheesh. I suspect that at real French companies like Thomson
they really do write all the programmes en francais. -John]

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