Python, Dutch, English, Chinese, Japanese, etc.

[Steve Howell]

--- Josiah Carlson <josiah.carlson at sbcglobal.net>
wrote:

> Steve Howell wrote:
> > I don't predict a huge upswing in Slavic-writing
> > Python programmers after PEP 3131, even among
> > children.
> 

I slightly misspoke here.  I meant to say children and
young adults, i.e. students up to early university
age.

> Are you predicting a sharp upswing in
> Chinese-writing (or any language) 
> Python programmers after PEP 3131 among children? 

Yes, and of course, it's just wild speculation on my
part.  A couple Chinese people have already weighed in
on this thread, so I'm curious to hear their
predictions too.

I don't how many Chinese people under the age of 20
use Python now, but if it's, for example, 1000 now,
and five years later, it's 15,000, I'd consider that
an upswing, and I consider that realistic.

> If so, why certain 
> groups of children and not others?
> 

Different forces, some of which I already mentioned:

   1) There are more young Chinese people than young
Slavic people.

   2) Slavic teenagers use an alphabet that is at
least structurally similar to ascii English (roughly
the same number of characters), so they have less to
gain from Unicode identifiers.

   3) I would think more Slavic young people have
exposure to English as a second language than Chinese,
although that may be rapidly changing.

On the other hand, it could be that PEP 3131 is
irrelevant to all of this speculation, and it really
just comes down to getting more documentation about
Python written in Chinese, and then waiting for a
critical mass of community to create some kind of
snowball effect.  I still think that's a long way off
in most countries, not just China.




 
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