Re: compiler for Chinese development language

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


For most of my non-English speaking colleagues, English is just fine.
After all, a set of '{' , '}' are just as meaningfull as BEGIN and END
are, and both are *loaded* with meaning well beyond the symbols used
to represent them. For all a non-English speaker cares, the English
keywords are neologisms with their own meaning. It doesn't matter
where the name was taken from. Many words we use today come from
Greek or Latin, and we don't care, we just use them in their current
meaning, regardless of where they came from.


Somehow, having keywords in other languages automatically creates two
separate namespaces. The English one is the one built-in. The local
language one is the one of your own program. This was good when
programing in COBOL which had so many reserved words. Actually, most
COBOLs programs I've seen (written by non-native English speakers) are
very brief, they rarely use all the optional reserved words meant to
make it fluid, since they didn't make sense anyhow. This is a
question for native English speakers. Are your COBOL programs
verbose? If they are not, it means that you weren't actually using
English when programming, otherwise, the broken English that results
from that would strike you as odd.


As for inflection, Spanish has also trouble with that. It is often
standardized amongst programming teams to use, for example, verbs in
infinitive for actions since that makes it easier to remember.
Otherwise, some programmers tend to name functions as if they were
describing what they are doing in it, and use the first person,
singular ('I_do_this'). Others name them from the point of view of
the user of that function, as if he/she was giving an order to the
function to do something and they use the second person, sometimes
singular, sometimes plural if it applies to sets('Do_this!'). Others
use the third person as if they were refering to something else,
something appart, remote, 'that function does this', as if in the name
they (first person) were explaing to the function user (second person)
what the function (third person) does ('Does_this'). Thus, even
though the function name might be descriptive and you might have its
name in the tip of your fingers, if you don't standardize you have to
check what tense it was used.


Satyam

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