🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <10942@saturn.ADS.COM> xanthian@saturn.ADS.COM (Metafont Consultant Account) writes:

>   No, they shouldn't.  One of the things that has contributed most to
>   the spread of software technology worldwide is standardization on
>   English as the language of programmers.  To what good fortune we can
>   attributed this I know not, and which language it was didn't matter
>   that much, but don't even suggest messing it up.....

     Acutally the choice of languge did matter.  In many areas of
computer science, such as compiler and language design, it seems to be
necessary to be fluent in English, Russian, or one of the Germanic
languages.  Ada is not a counterexample.  All of the members of the
French led design team were and are fluent in English, and although
some would contend that some of the design team discussions were held
in English as opposed to American, very little, if any, work was done
in French.  Even today in Alsys S.A. headquaters in Paris, it is rare
to hear technical discussion in French, and the company is partly
owned by the French government.

     Of course, anyone will tell you that whatever language the Algol
68 Revised Report is written in, it isn't English.  But that just
illustrates why a mutable languge is necessary for programmers--you
often have to add new terms to describe new concepts.

     Even more interesting is that, although people who learned
Chinese as a native tounge seem to have a special aptitude for
compiler work, it is almost impossible for them to master langauge
grammers unless they have mastered English.  

     Before anyone starts flaming, read what I said carefully.  This
is all about "milk languages" and not about race.  I have known
people of almost every race who were bi- or multi-lingual, worked on
compilers, and learned Chinese as children.  Knowing English, Chinese,
Russian, and German (or Danish, Swedish, or Dutch) helped greatly in
about that order, but in the few cases where I knew someone fluent in
Chinese and French, their expertise increased dramatically as they
mastered English.  Those who spoke, say, Russian, German and Yiddish
as children did not improve in technical ability as their English
improved. (However their comments got lots more readable. :-)

     In my experience Japanese, Arabic, and Korean are all poison in
the compiler world.  If you know them, try to forget them.  In a very
cosmopolitan computer company I used to work for, it was easy to dig
up someone who spoke the language of any visiting customer like a
native (even Czech, Vietnamese, and Thai), but we had to hire someone
in marketing who could speak Japanese since no one else did.  Spanish
French, and Italian seem to be only a slight hinderance.

--

					Robert I. Eachus

with STANDARD_DISCLAIMER;
use  STANDARD_DISCLAIMER;
function MESSAGE (TEXT: in CLEVER_IDEAS) return BETTER_IDEAS is...