[Python-ideas] PEP 505: None-aware operators

[Peter J. Holzer]

On 2018-07-22 10:33:23 -0700, Michael Selik wrote:
> On Sat, Jul 21, 2018, 6:55 PM Steven D'Aprano <steve at pearwood.info> wrote:
>     On Sun, Jul 22, 2018 at 01:56:35AM +0200, Giampaolo Rodola' wrote:
>     > On Thu, Jul 19, 2018 at 3:39 PM Steven D'Aprano <steve at pearwood.info>
>     > wrote:
>     > > Tens of thousands of non-English speakers have had to learn the meaning
>     > > of what might as well be meaningless, random sets of symbols (to them)
>     > > like "class", "import", "while" and "True". If they can do so, perhaps
>     > > we English-speakers should stop complaining about how hard it is to
>     > > memorise the meaning of a couple of symbols like ??.
>     >
>     > "class", "import", "while" and "True" are keywords, not symbols.
> 
>     They are only key WORDS if you are an English speaker.

They are also words if you are not an English speaker. I don't speak
Chinese, but "Pǔtonghuà" is certainly a word for me (although I wouldn't
recognize 普通话 as that word).

>     If your language
>     doesn't use the Latin script, they don't even look like words. They look
>     like gibberish: ∌≇⊅∇∫
> 
> 
> Are you familiar with how people who don't speak English code? I'm curious how
> they teach and use Python.

I know a few people who don't know enough English to read English
documentation. But AFAIK they didn't have a problem memorizing a few
dozen keywords. Learning the semantics of a programming language is a
much larger task than learning a few words, and having familiar keywords
probably doesn't really help much (they still don't mean what they mean
in English).

Of course we do use the Latin alphabet, I don't know how somebody who
had to learn the Latin alphabet specifically for programming would cope.
It's probably like programming in APL.

I guess I could learn PerlYuYan[1] to find out ;-).

        hp

[1] https://metacpan.org/pod/Lingua::Sinica::PerlYuYan


-- 
   _  | Peter J. Holzer    | we build much bigger, better disasters now
|_|_) |                    | because we have much more sophisticated
| |   | hjp at hjp.at         | management tools.
__/   | http://www.hjp.at/ | -- Ross Anderson <https://www.edge.org/>
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