"Non-English speaking" or "English as a second language" programmers

[Bart]

And a completely i18n-ed Pascal would be even worse.

You do know that that proposal was a try at sarcasm?
(B.t.w. proving the point that it may be difficult to express yourself in a foreign language.)

Bart

[LV]

Yeah, it's really helpful in math calculations to write  "λ" or "μ".

But not if I have to change this code.
I wouldn't even know how to get a "λ" or "μ" out of my keyboard here.

Bart

It's easy. Press the Win + . or Win + ; (Win is a key with the Windows logo).

[wp]

You do know that that proposal was a try at sarcasm?

I know, but I did not know whether others knew, too.

[Bart]

It's easy. Press the Win + . or Win + ; (Win is a key with the Windows logo).

That just lets me select emoji's.
But basically you're saying: use a character-map (the IDE has one).
That's efficient coding for you 

Bart

[Kays]

[…] Another thing I find strange is how two German guys in my chat channel talk to each other in English instead of german, which would be much easier for them […]

D’you know ’em? Language proficiency is domain specific. If, say, you studied Chinese law in Mandarin you can’t automatically explain everything in German, too, since you never bothered to learn all the proper translations as well.

Perhaps we should all just be happy that the initial innovations in electronic computation weren't made in China, leaving us with the necessity of mastering a twenty thousand key keyboard.

The technical innovation preceding computer keyboards is the typewriter. The teletypes were electrically controlled typewriters.

I wonder how they do the chinese characters? […]

The Chinese have mastered the discipline of psychokinesis: By force of their minds they can move electrons (so bits get flipped).

Falls  =      dann 

Hahahahaha.

[…] Apparently, this is a useful feature.

I’m calling the court.

Do you think that fpc will ever support unicode names?

Hopefully never.

Why not?

Code: Pascal  [Select][+][-]

1. var
2.         A: integer;
3. begin
4.         А := 42
5. end.

Code: Text  [Select][+][-]

1. Error: Identifier not found "А"

[…] I wouldn't even know how to get a "λ" or "μ" out of my keyboard here.

I use the NEO keyboard layout, so it’s pretty straightforward to remember: Press and hold the “Greek layer” selection keys and tap M (like mu) for μ, or L (like lambda) for λ.

[Curt Carpenter]

The technical innovation preceding computer keyboards is the typewriter. The teletypes were electrically controlled typewriters.

The technical innovation preceding the keyboard was "the Ancient Greek hydraulis, a type of pipe organ, invented in the third century BC." 

[Joanna]

The best use case for unicode identifiers would probably be people making Closed source code only intended for other people who understand their language. As it is now, non English speakers probably make identifiers with something as close as possible to their native language as possible.

Foreign language variable names would definitely be a disaster for people who don’t know the language even if not written in unicode. Thank goodness for easy refactoring name changing

@wp I agree that bad code can happen in any language and I’ve seen some very poorly named variables before and even worse someone using the same variable name for different purposes.

@ Curt Carpenter that sounds interesting, how was it used?

@kays Their entire conversation is in English not just programming related terminology. Maybe they just want to practice English... sometimes I can get them to speak german so I can learn some german. 

[Curt Carpenter]

@ Curt Carpenter that sounds interesting, how was it used?

https://www.archaeologychannel.org/video-guide-summary/109-the-ancient-hydraulis

[LV]

Using unicode in variable names can be subjective. I'm currently reading an algorithm from computational physics, which generally uses a lot of Greek symbols. In Julia (https://julialang.org), you can use βl2 and α safely, which is readable among 100 to 1,000 ASCII characters. But I do like Free Pascal. I don't mind writing beta_l2 or alpha there.

Sorry, English is not my native language.

P.S. You have a cool forum. Besides programming, I was curious reading about communism and capitalism and proletarian internationalism just above. 

[Joanna]

One reason not to use unicode for fpc could be that people using it on some operating systems could have difficulty if said operating systems were pre Unicode.

As for bart’s attempt at sarcasm.. the idea is not so bad if the internationalized reserved words were controlled by ide language preferences. Suppose the actual code is still in standard pascal but only the view of the code is translated to the language of choice kind of like an alias ? With an option to disable this feature. It might create whole sets of reserved words for every language though...

[marcov]

Do you think that fpc will ever support unicode names? I’m not sure what would be involved but it would definitely benefit people who don’t use English alphabet.. 

It is non trivial, but it is a compatibility item, but there seem not too many people using it. It is more a feature to demonstrate and for bullet lists it seems.

I wouldn't hold my breath for the feature to drop, but if some major refactoring of the parser is done, it might be an objective.

Maybe better i18n the language completely?

There already was some Spanish variant somewhere :-)

[PascalDragon]

Do you think that fpc will ever support unicode names? I’m not sure what would be involved but it would definitely benefit people who don’t use English alphabet.. 

It is on my longterm ToDo list and if done FPC would follow the Unicode Standard Annex #31 - Unicode Identifiers and Syntax which most programming languages follow that do support Unicode identifiers.

Do you think that fpc will ever support unicode names?

Hopefully never.

Why not?

Code: Pascal  [Select][+][-]

1. var
2.         A: integer;
3. begin
4.         А := 42
5. end.

Code: Text  [Select][+][-]

1. Error: Identifier not found "А"

If I remember correctly the standard I mentioned above has provisions for that. I'd have to reread it though (which I'd have to do at least once I start working on this )

[…] I wouldn't even know how to get a "λ" or "μ" out of my keyboard here.

I use the NEO keyboard layout, so it’s pretty straightforward to remember: Press and hold the “Greek layer” selection keys and tap M (like mu) for μ, or L (like lambda) for λ.

I use NEO, too

One reason not to use unicode for fpc could be that people using it on some operating systems could have difficulty if said operating systems were pre Unicode.

Why would that matter? The file itself is just a bunch of Bytes for the operating system and it's only applications (in this case the compiler) that gives meaning to it. Identifiers don't get past the binary except for dynamic imports and debug information. For the later the debugger needs to handle it correctly or it will usually just display placeholder or wrong characters. For the imports you need to use the correct ones anyway. And at least from what I see at least Delphi encodes Unicode Identifiers using "#xx#xx" with the UTF-8 value of the character in question.

[Joanna]

Thanks for clarifying 
I never realized that unicode variable names existed in other languages. Hopefully fpc will eventually catch up.

[VisualLab]

You forgot gunpowder...

That’s true and it didn’t occur to them to use it for killing people. It was used for fireworks to celebrate the new year.

Definitely? History books show that China in ancient times was not a land of happiness. Yes, they differed from Europe in cultural matters, but not in terms of approach to the individual (man) and the people (society).

[VisualLab]

Moreover, the foundations of communism are senseless - they do not take into account human characteristics (especially flaws) and what people really need at a given moment. So this simply couldn't happen (luckily for us).

Indeed, thank god for capitalism that takes into account human characteristics so well... the world needed human greed and the capitalist love for quick money to turn Boeing into what it has become (a "drive-thru" airplane maker... McBoeing... would you like some fries with your 737 sir ?).   There are tens of thousands of good examples but, Boeing is currently a very nice one.

Apologies for the "off topic" post.

It's interesting to see opinions like that in an open source forum.  The existence of FPC and Lazarus along with the great majority of related components and software is not driven by capitalism, on the contrary, it's often driven by opposition to it and its effect on the results.   Money buys time but cannot buy genuine motivation.

It depends on what one means by capitalism. It is interesting that for many people the word "capitalism" is associated with the USA. Meanwhile, this country is not capitalist. Owners and heads of corporations do not want to hear about capitalism because it forces them to constantly compete, lower prices, introduce innovations, and spend money on research. And it all costs money. What would they use to buy another yacht, plane, or organize a party with vodka, drugs and a group of whores or gigolos? In fact, it now resembles an industrial version of the old feudal kingdoms, where the aristocracy did whatever they wanted.