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The programming world isn't as balkanized as natural languages. If Tiobe is to believed, the top 20 programming languages account for 85% of "use". By contras

by cgrubb 16y ago

The programming world isn't as balkanized as natural languages. If Tiobe is to believed, the top 20 programming languages account for 85% of "use". By contrast, the native speakers for the top 20 natural languages only have 50% of the world population. Here's a spreadsheet with the data. http://j.mp/hiPGXA Other factors to consider: learning a new programming language requires less than a tenth the effort of learning a natural language (my estimate). That's for people. Getting my laptop to speak a new language is mostly a matter of downloading the interpreter or compiler. Granted the interpreter or compiler has to be initially ported to the architecture or OS. So not only is there less programming language balkanization, but the cost of balkanization is less.

jerf 16y ago
I think the differences between computer languages are more profound than the differences between human languages. Human language differences aren't necessarily "not profound" but for the most part they have the deep structural similarities mentioned in the article and their interestingness comes from other sources. (I think a profoundly different language would have to be something that isn't a reshuffling of noun, verb, adverb, adjective, etc, such as the one in the classic Darmok episode of ST:TNG [1]. Which I think also can't work in practice, but at least it's different.) The challenge of learning a new human language lies primarily in their sheer size; especially assuming two essentially unrelated languages like Chinese and English, you must relearn everything; the words, the phonology, the surface grammar, even as you still really have noun, verb, adverb, adjective. Learning a new programming language on the other hand can cause you to rethink everything you thought you knew about programming in general... but you can do it relatively quickly because opening a file, reading some strings, chewing on them, and spitting them out into a new file just doesn't take several thousand verbs and nouns. I make these observations without value judgment. I'm not saying one is better or worse than the other; both are worth pursuing. If I have a particular point at all I guess it would be that using the learning of a computer or human language as a metaphor for the other doesn't seem like a great idea to me, there's too many relevant differences for the points people want to make. [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darmok http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darmok
btilly 16y ago
Not so fast. One of the top programming languages is C++. However C++ by itself, is in fact several rather different programming languages.

by cgrubb 16y ago

jerf 16y ago

I think the differences between computer languages are more profound than the differences between human languages. Human language differences aren't necessarily "not profound" but for the most part they have the deep structural similarities mentioned in the article and their interestingness comes from other sources. (I think a profoundly different language would have to be something that isn't a reshuffling of noun, verb, adverb, adjective, etc, such as the one in the classic Darmok episode of ST:TNG [1]. Which I think also can't work in practice, but at least it's different.) The challenge of learning a new human language lies primarily in their sheer size; especially assuming two essentially unrelated languages like Chinese and English, you must relearn everything; the words, the phonology, the surface grammar, even as you still really have noun, verb, adverb, adjective. Learning a new programming language on the other hand can cause you to rethink everything you thought you knew about programming in general... but you can do it relatively quickly because opening a file, reading some strings, chewing on them, and spitting them out into a new file just doesn't take several thousand verbs and nouns. I make these observations without value judgment. I'm not saying one is better or worse than the other; both are worth pursuing. If I have a particular point at all I guess it would be that using the learning of a computer or human language as a metaphor for the other doesn't seem like a great idea to me, there's too many relevant differences for the points people want to make. [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darmok http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darmok

btilly 16y ago

Not so fast. One of the top programming languages is C++. However C++ by itself, is in fact several rather different programming languages.