PEP 3131: Supporting Non-ASCII Identifiers

[René Fleschenberg]

Carsten Haese schrieb:
> Allowing people to use identifiers in their native language would
> definitely be an advantage for people from such cultures. That's the use
> case for this PEP. It's easy for Euro-centric people to say "just suck
> it up and use ASCII", but the same people would probably starve to death
> if they were suddenly teleported from Somewhere In Europe to rural China
> which is so unimaginably different from what they know that it might
> just as well be a different planet. "Learn English and use ASCII" is not
> generally feasible advice in such cultures.

This is a very weak argument, IMHO. How do you want to use Python
without learning at least enough English to grasp a somewhat decent
understanding of the standard library? Let's face it: To do any "real"
programming, you need to know at least some English today, and I don't
see that changing anytime soon. And it is definitely not going to be
changed by allowing non-ASCII identifiers.

I must say that the argument about domain-specific terms that
programmers don't know how to translate into English does hold some
merit (although it does not really convince me, either -- are these
cases really so common that you cannot feasibly use a transliteration?).
But having, for example, things like open() from the stdlib in your code
and then öffnen() as a name for functions/methods written by yourself is
just plain silly. It makes the code inconsistent and ugly without
significantly improving the readability for someone who speaks German
but not English.

-- 
René