Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!watcgl!kim From: kim@watsup.waterloo.edu (T. Kim Nguyen) Newsgroups: can.general Subject: French programming languages Message-ID: Date: 14 Aug 89 20:18:25 GMT References: <89Aug3.145600edt.10404@neat.cs.toronto.edu> <28168@watmath.waterloo.edu> <3521@uwovax.uwo.ca> <1989Aug13.204235.18993@alberta.uucp> Sender: daemon@watcgl.waterloo.edu Distribution: can Organization: PAMI Group, U. of Waterloo, Ontario Lines: 37 In-reply-to: gilles@alberta.uucp's message of 13 Aug 89 20:42:35 GMT In article <1989Aug13.204235.18993@alberta.uucp> gilles@alberta.uucp (Gilles Simon Dionne) writes: In article kim@watsup.waterloo.edu (T. Kim Nguyen) writes: >I once got a close look at the French-ized version of Logo. It was >absolutely incomprehensible. Perhaps, you can't understand French ? This does make it much harder to comprehend!! :-) I forgot to mention that French is my maternal language (and, yes, I am fluent in it, written and oral)!!! >Perhaps the French have gone on with their language conversion, but if >they have, they are simply heading for a dead end, because no one else ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ >in the world will use that language but them, not when even the >Japanese use the English versions. >-- Why? Do you care if your favorite software package is written in C, Pascal or Modula II or directly in assembler ? You don't see what's inside so what is the difference to you? I believe it is the same for "French" or "English" programming languages. If they write the "best" software on the market, why should they have problems selling it? Maintenance by local people you say? Hmm. My research bias shows itself here. I was thinking of papers published in journals, say, on artificial intelligence. If some research group decided to use a French version of Lisp then I would have difficulty understanding their program. Of course, the same happens if that group wrote the program in a completely different language that they invented. The point I was trying to make is that to communicate, we might want to keep to some sort of language/conceptual framework standard. -- Kim Nguyen kim@watsup.waterloo.edu Systems Design Engineering -- University of Waterloo, Ontario, Canada