[Python-ideas] Truly international Python

[spir]

On Tue, 30 Nov 2010 14:49:29 -1000
"Carl M. Johnson" <cmjohnson.mailinglist at gmail.com> wrote:

> - The comment that tends to come up in these threads is that "non-native
> English speakers are going to have to learn 'a new language' anyway, so
> what's the difference between learning to map a word in their own language
> to a Python concept to learning to map an arbitrary English word to a Python
> concept. In either case, it doesn't make any sense to write, "for the sake
> of justice:" in English or "正義のために" in Japanese. Python's "for" is not the
> English "for." It's its own thing. It means "process this iterator in a
> loop." That's different from the English "for" and it's going to be

(All of this is just personal opinion.)

I have been a proponent of "python, international", now I agree with all what is generally said about the difficulty to create non-english Python-s, naming problems that arise from that, and doubts about whether it's worth it at all. Except for pegagogic-only intents.

But, imo, what you state above greatly underestimates the power of words. I think that our brains intensively use all kinds of helps & hints available for thinking -- words, or signs or symbols in general, being its preferred food ;-) I think you use the common sense of "for" for programming, at least you used it as long as its sense in python was not fully integrated. Reason why unproper naming or "symboling" is so harmful, esp for newcomers.
Then, we develop new values (in the linguistic sense) for existing words, just like with natural langages when getting used to a new acception of an already known word or idiom. But original senses remain and interact. Wrong symbols still disturb our brains. The more directly a programming word maps to the usual sense, the better.
There are 2 syntax errors I constantly do after years & years of python -- and I consider them as revealing its only 2 syntactic defaults: using "=" instead of "==" (because the sense is wrong) and forgetting ":" (because there is no sense at all). Probably my brain is not flexible enough, and/or I'm too old ;-). Well, those are not words, but I think you understand what I mean, anyway.


denis
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