Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!unmvax!nmtsun!john
From: john@nmtsun.nmt.edu (John Shipman)
Newsgroups: comp.software-eng
Subject: Re: Question on programming languages
Summary: Why APL doesn't use English keywords
Message-ID: <3276@nmtsun.nmt.edu>
Date: 4 Oct 89 03:46:26 GMT
References: <8720001@hplsla.HP.COM> <1064@mrsvr.UUCP>
Reply-To: john@nmtsun.nmt.edu (John Shipman)
Organization: Zoological Data Processing
Lines: 23

First, Bill Harris (billh@hplsla.HP.COM) wrote:
+---
| I am curious: does anyone know of any computer languages
| that have been implemented whose keywords are based on
| some language other than English?
+---

Then, Jeffrey A. Hallett (hallett@gemed.ge.com) replied:
+---
| APL, the write-only language. (17 smileys omitted)
+---

This may have been intended as a wisecrack, but there may be
an element of truth to it.  As I understand it, Ken Iverson
thought it was rather ethnocentric to use English keywords
for his operators.  He used pictorial symbols in hopes of
making the language more universally accepted.  A bit
ironic, neh?
-- 
John Shipman/Zoological Data Processing/Socorro, New Mexico
USENET: ucbvax!unmvax!nmtsun!john  CSNET: john@nmtsun.nmt.edu ``A lesson from
past over-machined societies...the devices themselves condition the users to
employ each other the way they employ machines.'' --Frank Herbert