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The `unison` programming language represents all symbols as labels on hashes, so it makes it relatively trivial to remap from one language to another. I commen

The `unison` programming language represents all symbols as labels on hashes, so it makes it relatively trivial to remap from one language to another. I commented on another thread about being hype about this, and people pushed back, commenting that it's really beneficial to have English as the lingua franca of software development. It strikes me that lowering the barrier to entry by not forcing someone to learn programming and English is positive. But fragmenting standard communication language harms software as a whole. Plus, learn English and you get access to millions upon millions of man hours in libraries and documentation. Maybe it's not really an either/or here; better for people to have choices. All of that said, "Latino" seems like a particularly terrible name for a programming language: it should probably be hispanohablantes for correctness.

SiempreViernes 6y ago
> All of that said, "Latino" seems like a particularly terrible name for a programming language Now I'm not sure who you think python is for...
- jgwil2 6y ago
  I think Python is a good name because although it's arbitrary, there's very little domain overlap that could cause confusion: context can pretty much always tell you whether people are referring to the language or the animal. Latino, on the other hand, seems to have a little more overlap: it's very close to Latin, an actual language, and also refers to the latinoamericano cultural identity, which is largely defined in relation to language. Thus the possibilities for confusion seem a bit greater (I think OP's suggestion of "hispanohablantes" would also cause a lot of confusion).
  - roflc0ptic 6y ago
    Yes, hispanohablantes was a little tongue in cheek. Perhaps latinx for maximal confusion
    - Jtsummers 6y ago
      Presumably latinx will be an X Windows implementation in Latino. At least I hope that happens at some point because I enjoy punny approaches to naming things.
    - dragonwriter 6y ago
      > Perhaps latinx for maximal confusion Latin@ is a little bit less of an USAism, but I'm not sure if that's a pro or con in the maximal confusion department.
      - roflc0ptic 6y ago
        that just means you need regionalization. Latin@ for americans, latinx for everyone else.
qsort 6y ago
As a non-English speaker, I don't really conceptualize code as English. Tokens being 'if', 'while', 'else' is completely trivial, like using '{' instead of 'begin' or '[]<class T>(T i) {return i;};' instead of '(lambda (x) x)' or 'y => y'. I wrote my first line of code before I wrote my first word in English, the status-quo doesn't really require you to learn English beyond a couple trivial tokens. I agree choices are good and I hope the project succeeds, but it must be stressed that learning English isn't really optional anyway, it's a hard requirement for any IT-related job worldwide.
- bombcar 6y ago
  I think it might affect some languages more than others - perl is just line noise in any language, but I could see SQL "dialects" in various languages. But even then I feel that in that case non-english speakers might have a bit of an advantage as they don't assume things about SQL because it doesn't look like their native language.
  - qsort 6y ago
    > but I could see SQL "dialects" in various languages. IIRC AppleScript used to support French, but it's an unpopular variant of an unpopular language, so I'm not really sure how many people actually used it. > But even then I feel that in that case non-english speakers might have a bit of an advantage as they don't assume things about SQL because it doesn't look like their native language. Yeah, the sooner you realize it's the abstract and not the concrete syntax you're actually manipulating, the better. IME (natural) language is just not a barrier at all.
- tsimionescu 6y ago
  That's true for keywords, but a much bigger problem are standard libraries. I don't think you could realistically understand the Swing API to pick an example without understanding English, even if you had access to docs in another language.
  - brudgers 6y ago
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
matheusmoreira 6y ago
> It strikes me that lowering the barrier to entry by not forcing someone to learn programming and English is positive. In my country's technology courses, students are often introduced to programming through a language called Portugol which is essentially a translated Pascal. There's no compiler, no interpreter or anything. For months on end students have to write procedural code on paper with this useless language.
- benjaminjosephw 6y ago
  Wow, that sucks. Wouldn't a source-to-source compiler into Pascal be a good option in that case? Writing a simple compilers might also be a good learning opportunity for the more experienced. Compilers are a way simpler concept than they might seem and really easy to write too.
- highspeedbus 6y ago
  There is a bunch of portugol compilers, all incompatible with each other since this is not a well defined language. Kinda the point is to not waste time learning syntax and use whatever imaginary functions calls you want. The more serious problem is when teachers uses it as a hammer to every nail and teach advanced concepts using it, so students are forced to reason about fine syntax of a fictional language.
jgwil2 6y ago
I would think that if there is any language that could be a viable alternative to English for programming, it would be Chinese: more native speakers than any other language, and with a writing system distant enough from that of English that learning English might actually constitute a significant barrier. Spanish is just not there. Yes, there are a lot of native speakers, but it's close enough to English that it's probably not going to be worthwhile to most Spanish-speaking programmers to participate in the alternative ecosystem (not to mention that it has less economic clout than Chinese).

SiempreViernes 6y ago

> All of that said, "Latino" seems like a particularly terrible name for a programming language Now I'm not sure who you think python is for...

jgwil2 6y ago
I think Python is a good name because although it's arbitrary, there's very little domain overlap that could cause confusion: context can pretty much always tell you whether people are referring to the language or the animal. Latino, on the other hand, seems to have a little more overlap: it's very close to Latin, an actual language, and also refers to the latinoamericano cultural identity, which is largely defined in relation to language. Thus the possibilities for confusion seem a bit greater (I think OP's suggestion of "hispanohablantes" would also cause a lot of confusion).
- roflc0ptic 6y ago
  Yes, hispanohablantes was a little tongue in cheek. Perhaps latinx for maximal confusion
  - Jtsummers 6y ago
    Presumably latinx will be an X Windows implementation in Latino. At least I hope that happens at some point because I enjoy punny approaches to naming things.
  - dragonwriter 6y ago
    > Perhaps latinx for maximal confusion Latin@ is a little bit less of an USAism, but I'm not sure if that's a pro or con in the maximal confusion department.
    - roflc0ptic 6y ago
      that just means you need regionalization. Latin@ for americans, latinx for everyone else.

qsort 6y ago

As a non-English speaker, I don't really conceptualize code as English. Tokens being 'if', 'while', 'else' is completely trivial, like using '{' instead of 'begin' or '[]<class T>(T i) {return i;};' instead of '(lambda (x) x)' or 'y => y'. I wrote my first line of code before I wrote my first word in English, the status-quo doesn't really require you to learn English beyond a couple trivial tokens. I agree choices are good and I hope the project succeeds, but it must be stressed that learning English isn't really optional anyway, it's a hard requirement for any IT-related job worldwide.

bombcar 6y ago
I think it might affect some languages more than others - perl is just line noise in any language, but I could see SQL "dialects" in various languages. But even then I feel that in that case non-english speakers might have a bit of an advantage as they don't assume things about SQL because it doesn't look like their native language.
- qsort 6y ago
  > but I could see SQL "dialects" in various languages. IIRC AppleScript used to support French, but it's an unpopular variant of an unpopular language, so I'm not really sure how many people actually used it. > But even then I feel that in that case non-english speakers might have a bit of an advantage as they don't assume things about SQL because it doesn't look like their native language. Yeah, the sooner you realize it's the abstract and not the concrete syntax you're actually manipulating, the better. IME (natural) language is just not a barrier at all.
tsimionescu 6y ago
That's true for keywords, but a much bigger problem are standard libraries. I don't think you could realistically understand the Swing API to pick an example without understanding English, even if you had access to docs in another language.
- brudgers 6y ago

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

matheusmoreira 6y ago

> It strikes me that lowering the barrier to entry by not forcing someone to learn programming and English is positive. In my country's technology courses, students are often introduced to programming through a language called Portugol which is essentially a translated Pascal. There's no compiler, no interpreter or anything. For months on end students have to write procedural code on paper with this useless language.

benjaminjosephw 6y ago
Wow, that sucks. Wouldn't a source-to-source compiler into Pascal be a good option in that case? Writing a simple compilers might also be a good learning opportunity for the more experienced. Compilers are a way simpler concept than they might seem and really easy to write too.
highspeedbus 6y ago
There is a bunch of portugol compilers, all incompatible with each other since this is not a well defined language. Kinda the point is to not waste time learning syntax and use whatever imaginary functions calls you want. The more serious problem is when teachers uses it as a hammer to every nail and teach advanced concepts using it, so students are forced to reason about fine syntax of a fictional language.

jgwil2 6y ago

I would think that if there is any language that could be a viable alternative to English for programming, it would be Chinese: more native speakers than any other language, and with a writing system distant enough from that of English that learning English might actually constitute a significant barrier. Spanish is just not there. Yes, there are a lot of native speakers, but it's close enough to English that it's probably not going to be worthwhile to most Spanish-speaking programmers to participate in the alternative ecosystem (not to mention that it has less economic clout than Chinese).