Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

Do you write "if" statements in Cyrillic when you write in <insert Python/Ruby/Java/.NET/whatever>?


No. Keywords are ASCII everywhere (no, APL's are not words). Mixing English in keywords and non-English in identifiers feels odd.

Algol-68 supported localized sets of keywords; fortunately this language is gone.

You can #define non-ASCII stuff in modern C++. It's your best chance to "localize" a mainstream language.

Same would work for Clojure, but Lisp uses a lot of quirky abbreviations like `cdr` or `setq` that give awkward translations.


It would be very amusing to see "если" in an if statement, given how much it looks and sound like "else" at a brief glance.


There are a few computer languages that have non-english keywords though! And among them it looks like there was a version of Algol with Russian keywords, as well as a bunch of others in the list. Scanning it it would seem that Logo and BASIC get translated a lot, which makes sense for teaching young learners who haven't learned English yet.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-English-based_programming_...


Why not? Several programming languages in the olden era did get localised.


I thought ArnoldC was just a couple of #define's, but looks like it isn't.




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: