PEP 3131: Supporting Non-ASCII Identifiers

[rurpy at yahoo.com]

"Hendrik van Rooyen" <mail at microcorp.co.za> wrote in message
news:mailman.7745.1179308671.32031.python-list at python.org...
> <rurpy at yahoo.com> wrote:

> > First "while" is a keyword and will remain "while" so
> > that has nothing to do with anything.
>
> I think this cuts right down to why I oppose the PEP.
> It is not so much for technical reasons as for aesthetic
> ones - I find reading a mix of languages horrible, and I am
> kind of surprised by the strength of my own reaction.

But to reiterate, most public code will remain english
because that is the only practical way of managing an
international project.

If don't understand this almost pathological fear that
if the PEP is adopted, the world will be deluged by
a torrent of non-english programs.  99.9% of such programs
will be born an die in an enviroment where only speakers
of those languages will touch them.

The few that leak into the wider world will have to
be internationalized before most people will consider
adopting them, volenteering to maintain them, etc.

And has been already pointed out this is already the
case.  How can you maintain a python program written
with only ascii identifiers but transliterated from
a non-english language and with documention, comments,
prompts and messages in that language?

This situation exists right now and it hasn't caused
the end of python-programming-as-we-know-it.

> If I try to analyse my feelings, I think that really the PEP
> does not go far enough, in a sense, and from memory
> it seems to me that only E Brunel, R Fleschenberg and
> to a lesser extent the Martellibot seem to somehow think
> in a similar way as I do, but I seem to have an extreme
> case of the disease...
>
> And the summaries of reasons for and against have left
> out objections based on this feeling of ugliness of mixed
> language.
>
> Interestingly, the people who seem to think a bit like that all
> seem to be non native English speakers who are fluent in
> English.

I have read that people who move to, or become citizens
of a new country often become far more patriotic and
defensive of their new country, then their native-born
compatriots.

> While the support seems to come from people whose English
> is perfectly adequate, but who are unsure to the extent that they
> apologise for their "bad" English.
>
> Is this a pattern that you have identified? - I don't know.
>
> I still don't like the thought of the horrible mix of "foreign"
> identifiers and English keywords, coupled with the English
> sentence construction.  And that, in a nutshell, is the main
> reason for my rather vehement opposition to this PEP.
>
> The other stuff about sharing and my inability to even type
> the OP's name correctly with the umlaut is kind of secondary
> to this feeling of revulsion.

Interesting explanation, thanks.  I personally feel a
lot of the reaction against the PEP involves psychological
drivers like loss of control and loss of status but am
not a psycologist so it would be too much work from me
to try and defend, so I won't try to.

I'll just say I think that making Python (significantly!!)
more accessible to non-English speakers is far too imporant
to both those potential new users as to Python itself,
that it should not be decided by "feelings".

> "Beautiful is better than ugly"

"Beauty is in the eye of the beholder"