Re: compiler for Chinese development language

I do agree that you can provide all your identifiers with native
characters (Unicode). But how about those who dont know English? the
keywords such as "public" or "synchronized" can be obvious and taken
for granted for those who know some English, but there are many
(probably in millions in countries like China and India) who know only
their native language. Forget about programming, even using the
computers itself is difficult. I am from India and inspite of all
claims made of support for computing environments native/regional
languages, I couldn't help my mother to help her learn using the basic
things like sending e-mails or browsing. Whatever support provided
isn't adequate and since the localization support is limited, English
gets exposed. I don't know, but things might be different for support
for European languages, but as programmers, I think they can do better
programming only if they know atleast some basic English.


So I do think, unless some conscious effort is made in supporting
vernacular languages, it would be difficult to program for those who
know only their mother tongue.


Ok, one basic question. Why is that the programming languages (like
C++) have reserved keywords in English? Why not some other
language/alternative?


Thanks!
-Ganesh
[Historically, modern software development started in the US and UK, where
people speak English. At least as far back as the early 1960s there were
versions of programming languages with the keywords other languages, but
they never caught on. A compiler doesn't care of an "if" keyword is
the two letters IF or SI or the Chinese equivalent, after all. -John]

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