PEP 3131: Supporting Non-ASCII Identifiers

[Duncan Booth]

Bruno Desthuilliers <bruno.42.desthuilliers at wtf.websiteburo.oops.com>
wrote: 

> Stefan Behnel a écrit :
>> Bruno Desthuilliers wrote:
>>> but CS is english-speaking, period.
>> 
>> That's a wrong assumption. 
> 
> I've never met anyone *serious* about programming and yet unable to
> read and write CS-oriented technical English.
> 
I don't believe that Python should be restricted to people *serious* about 
programming.

Recently there has been quite a bit of publicity about the One Laptop Per 
Child project. The XO laptop is just beginning rollout to children and 
provides two main programming environments: Squeak and Python. It is an 
exciting thought that that soon there will be millions of children in 
countries such as Nigeria, Brazil, Uruguay or Nepal[*] who have the 
potential to learn to program, but tragic if the Python community is too 
arrogant to consider it acceptable to use anything but English and ASCII.

Yes, any sensible widespread project is going to mandate a particular 
language for variable names and comments, but I see no reason at all why 
they all have to use English.


[*] BTW, I see OLPC Nepal is looking for volunteer Python programmers this 
Summer: if anyone fancies spending 6+ weeks in Nepal this Summer for no 
pay, see http://www.mail-archive.com/devel@laptop.org/msg04109.html