3 ms·
Ask HN: Is all software written with the latin alphabet?
I know many languages allow variable names using UTF-8 characters, but are there any programming languages where the language's reserved words (if / then / else / function / class / etc.) are not in english or the latin alphabet?
- pattusk 7y agoThis classical chinese programming language was posted here recently: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22213406 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22213406 I know that the ussr developed a cyrillic based programming language (on my phone now so can't find an exact source). Early ODRA computers from Poland used the latin alphabet but instructions were nonetheless from polish rather than English. Would love to hear about other cases.
- pattusk 7y agoTurns out wikipedia has a page on this issue: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-English-based_programming_languages https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-English-based_programmin... I'm sure it's not comprehensive though.
- revi 7y agoNot an 'ordinary' language, but maybe aheui[1] fits in? [1]: https://aheui.readthedocs.io/ko/latest/specs.en.html https://aheui.readthedocs.io/ko/latest/specs.en.html
- ejdo 7y agoPiet comes to mind, but it's not exactly a "serious" language: https://esolangs.org/wiki/Piet https://esolangs.org/wiki/Piet Esolang also has a category for Chinese/Japanese/Korean languages: https://esolangs.org/wiki/Category:CJK https://esolangs.org/wiki/Category:CJK And one for non-textual languages: https://esolangs.org/wiki/Category:Non-textual https://esolangs.org/wiki/Category:Non-textual
- kasbah 7y agoYou can use Unicode symbols in GHC Haskell for e.g. λ. Then there's APL of course which also re-uses a lot of ancient Greek and other symbols that these days would most likely be in Unicode. https://wiki.haskell.org/Unicode-symbols https://wiki.haskell.org/Unicode-symbols https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/APL_(programming_language) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/APL_(programming_language) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a9xAKttWgP4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a9xAKttWgP4