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I believe you're missing the point. Here are some historical uses of Latin: - Obviously it was the language of the Roman Empire; - It is the basis for many Eu
by cletus 15y ago
I believe you're missing the point. Here are some historical uses of Latin:
- Obviously it was the language of the Roman Empire;
- It is the basis for many European languages;
- It was the language of Christianity, the Papacy for thousands of years (tying in somewhat historically with the conversion of Constantine). This went so far as Roman Catholic services being held in Latin until IIRC the 1960s;
- Prior to the printing press, books were the province of monks and the like so being educated (in Western Europe) involved speaking Latin;
- In England, Latin was the language of court and the law for centuries. There are many Latin terms--even in American law--for a reason;
- Latin was the language of science. Element names in chemistry, species names in biology and so on have Latin roots;
- For centuries, Latin was the lingua franca of the ruling class of Europe.
The short of it is that being able to speak, read and write Latin in medieval and Renaissance Europe was power. More to the point, if you didn't know Latin, you were essentially excluded from many things (as many people were). Knowing Latin had as much power and influence as literacy in general.
So what the author is saying is the ability "speak" the language of computers, the ability to communicate with them and make them do things, is the 21st century version of the thrall once held by Latin.
Many have spoken about how expensive it was to launch a dot-com company in the 90s and how that cost has essentially decreased by two orders of magnitude in a decade. One might have thought this would make engineers less valuable as our skills would've been commoditized to some degree.
The converse has happened. While other costs have largely vanished, more businesses became possible that never were before. There seems to be an insatiable demand for engineering talent, at least for the short to medium term.
Last century the dream was the 21st century would be about space exploration and an otherwise "Star Trek" like future. Instead I believe the story about the 21st century will be what incredible things we do with computers. Genetic engineering, curing diseases, artificial intelligence, you name it.
This may go so far as to essentially stratify society. It's hard to overstate just how importance computers will be in the next century (IMHO).
- tezza 15y agoIt is a little harsh on me to say that I "missed the point". I was not short of understanding of the historical significance of Latin. I led with the fact that I studied Latin for 6 years. During this time all your reasons were expounded ad nauseam. I want to avoid getting into any flamewar with someone whose StackOverflow karma is measured in exponents. (I made no point on the importance of training people to program computers, the second theme of your comment.) What I was saying is that I believe Latin for one hundred years has involved nearly ZERO speaking. There are some very scholarly latin speakers with an English/Vatican pronunciation divide. But they are the exceptions. Yes there is Vatican City, but I think we can both agree that it would be best if there are more people who can program computers than the population of the Vatican (832).
- learc83 15y agoI don't think the OP is comparing programming to Latin today, but to Latin during the Renaissance. Yes Latin isn't spoken, and nothing is created in it today, but that wasn't true hundreds of years ago. Programming is like Latin 400 years ago.
- FreakLegion 15y agoThere are actually a fair few people who practice spoken Latin for pleasure. As for the pronunciation divide, that's a quirk we inherited from German.
- delinka 15y ago"I believe you're missing the point." "Coding - the new Latin" is a marketing slogan. And if it breeds misunderstanding, or has to be explained, then it's not a good marketing slogan. I design software and write code. My initial reaction to the phrase was "so you're telling people it's hard and they should give up before they get started?" After that, I decided I had to read the article to get the meaning. Perhaps it's a dead ringer of a slogan in the UK. But it won't get kids a-codin' in my corner of the globe.
- chc 15y agoIf it breeds misunderstanding or has to be explained to people who aren't in the target demographic, that's neither here nor there. They don't strictly need you to understand any more than they need cocker spaniels to. From what I can tell, the people they're trying to reach are British educators and education policy-makers, and if you're not one of them, I feel pretty sure their relationship with Latin is very different from yours.
- sethg 15y agoI agree with your factual statements, but my immediate reaction to “coding is the new Latin” is “does this person mean that coding is a skill which is fairly useless for its own sake, but signals to other people that you have mastered a complicated formal system and therefore deserve admission to the club of the elite?”
- dlf 15y agoThat's exactly what I thought.