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Am I really monolingual when I'm fluent in multiple programming languages and endless niche industry jargon? Jokes aside, I'd assume the context switching woul

by asdf21 7y ago

Am I really monolingual when I'm fluent in multiple programming languages and endless niche industry jargon? Jokes aside, I'd assume the context switching would be psychologically rather similar.

awestroke 7y ago
Yes
smt88 7y ago
The context switching between programming languages bears no subjective similarity to human language. As someone who knows 2 human languages and 6-8 computer languages, it's just not at all similar. They don't use the same parts of your brain, for starters. You can't describe a dream in Java.
- asdf21 7y ago
  I know French and English and several programming languages, and they do seem very similar to me. >You can't describe a dream in Java. Before you write any code, you first imagine how the application should work. So yes, a person can codify something from their imagination into Java.
  - paganel 7y ago
    > and they do seem very similar to me. Maybe on a superficial level, as a lot of the English vocabulary is taken from (older) French, but once for you example read D.H. Lawrence and Proust in original (two great writers both of them) you'll be able to see and most especially feel ("feel" as in not "scientifically" provable) that the two languages are indeed very different. The same goes for French and Spanish or French and Italian, even though all three of them are Romance languages once you go down to the specifics things are starting to look and fell more and more different. I know that this being a programming-oriented website everything out-there is seen as either data or information, and as such languages are just seen as ways of forwarding or communication that data/information, but in the real world languages have a lot deeper meaning than that.
  - kiba 7y ago
    Programming languages are similar enough that people can easily pick up other languages. Not so with natural languages, which required more effort.
  - edanm 7y ago
    > I know French and English and several programming languages, and they do seem very similar to me. I don't know, there are lots of obvious differences. I mean, just the fact that human languages have much larger vocabularies makes it so that learning a human language exercises the memory part of your brain way more than learning a programming language. (And yes, I'm pretty sure human languages have vastly larger vocabularies, even if you include things like standard libraries, etc. Especially since most programmers don't know most standard libraries by heart, as opposed to vocabulary.)
WilliamEdward 7y ago
Just because they are called languages doesn't make them at all similar to spoken languages. I get the etymology but it's really not the same at all.

by asdf21 7y ago

Am I really monolingual when I'm fluent in multiple programming languages and endless niche industry jargon? Jokes aside, I'd assume the context switching would be psychologically rather similar.

awestroke 7y ago

Yes

smt88 7y ago

The context switching between programming languages bears no subjective similarity to human language. As someone who knows 2 human languages and 6-8 computer languages, it's just not at all similar. They don't use the same parts of your brain, for starters. You can't describe a dream in Java.

asdf21 7y ago
I know French and English and several programming languages, and they do seem very similar to me. >You can't describe a dream in Java. Before you write any code, you first imagine how the application should work. So yes, a person can codify something from their imagination into Java.
- paganel 7y ago
  > and they do seem very similar to me. Maybe on a superficial level, as a lot of the English vocabulary is taken from (older) French, but once for you example read D.H. Lawrence and Proust in original (two great writers both of them) you'll be able to see and most especially feel ("feel" as in not "scientifically" provable) that the two languages are indeed very different. The same goes for French and Spanish or French and Italian, even though all three of them are Romance languages once you go down to the specifics things are starting to look and fell more and more different. I know that this being a programming-oriented website everything out-there is seen as either data or information, and as such languages are just seen as ways of forwarding or communication that data/information, but in the real world languages have a lot deeper meaning than that.
- kiba 7y ago
  Programming languages are similar enough that people can easily pick up other languages. Not so with natural languages, which required more effort.
- edanm 7y ago
  > I know French and English and several programming languages, and they do seem very similar to me. I don't know, there are lots of obvious differences. I mean, just the fact that human languages have much larger vocabularies makes it so that learning a human language exercises the memory part of your brain way more than learning a programming language. (And yes, I'm pretty sure human languages have vastly larger vocabularies, even if you include things like standard libraries, etc. Especially since most programmers don't know most standard libraries by heart, as opposed to vocabulary.)

WilliamEdward 7y ago

Just because they are called languages doesn't make them at all similar to spoken languages. I get the etymology but it's really not the same at all.