<story><title>قلب: a non-ASCII programming language written in Arabic</title><url>http://nas.sr/%D9%82%D9%84%D8%A8/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>babuskov</author><text>Agreed. I started to program in BASIC some 7 years before I started to learn English. I had no idea what PRINT or LET meant and was able to program without any problems.&lt;p&gt;Hm, even today, I have not idea why &amp;quot;for&amp;quot; is used for loops (?) and I&amp;#x27;m using it without any problems.</text></item><item><author>probably_wrong</author><text>&amp;gt; &lt;i&gt;it never caught on, even in Francophone countries&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;I started programming at least 4 years before I started learning English. In my experience, not knowing what &amp;quot;if&amp;quot; means doesn&amp;#x27;t change anything because I never thought of code as prose. Whether it&amp;#x27;s called &amp;quot;if&amp;quot;, &amp;quot;si&amp;quot;, or &amp;quot;wenn&amp;quot;, all that changes in my head is &amp;quot;what&amp;#x27;s the magic word that I have to insert before I can branch my code?&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;This, I believe, it&amp;#x27;s why localized programming languages never catch on: because it solves a problem I don&amp;#x27;t have while bringing a new problem I &lt;i&gt;do&lt;/i&gt; have, namely, not being able to find support for my niche programming language.&lt;p&gt;Variable names and comments? Sure, &lt;i&gt;those&lt;/i&gt; are definitely prose. But I doubt anyone suffered too much when Python chose &amp;quot;elif&amp;quot; instead of &amp;quot;else if&amp;quot; (other than developers trying to remember whether a particular script should use &amp;quot;else if&amp;quot;, &amp;quot;elsif&amp;quot;, &amp;quot;elif&amp;quot;, or &amp;quot;|&amp;quot;).</text></item><item><author>Animats</author><text>Oh, it&amp;#x27;s just an art project.&lt;p&gt;We haven&amp;#x27;t yet seen a serious non-English programming language.  One would have expected one in Chinese or Japanese by now. There was COBOL in French, once, with French words and word order, but it never caught on, even in Francophone countries.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>Scarblac</author><text>When I was 10, the Dutch language manual for the Commodore 64 explained the pronunciation of &amp;quot;input#&amp;quot;, but not that of just &amp;quot;input&amp;quot;. So I (unfamiliar with foreign languages) thought that &amp;quot;input&amp;quot; was pronounced as we would in Dutch, while &amp;quot;input#&amp;quot; sounded like what I now know is English.&lt;p&gt;A class mate said his father said they were both pronounced as in English.&lt;p&gt;We had a fight over this in the playground, and I beat him. So I was right. &amp;quot;input&amp;quot; on the Commodore 64 is pronounced like in Dutch.</text></comment>
<story><title>قلب: a non-ASCII programming language written in Arabic</title><url>http://nas.sr/%D9%82%D9%84%D8%A8/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>babuskov</author><text>Agreed. I started to program in BASIC some 7 years before I started to learn English. I had no idea what PRINT or LET meant and was able to program without any problems.&lt;p&gt;Hm, even today, I have not idea why &amp;quot;for&amp;quot; is used for loops (?) and I&amp;#x27;m using it without any problems.</text></item><item><author>probably_wrong</author><text>&amp;gt; &lt;i&gt;it never caught on, even in Francophone countries&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;I started programming at least 4 years before I started learning English. In my experience, not knowing what &amp;quot;if&amp;quot; means doesn&amp;#x27;t change anything because I never thought of code as prose. Whether it&amp;#x27;s called &amp;quot;if&amp;quot;, &amp;quot;si&amp;quot;, or &amp;quot;wenn&amp;quot;, all that changes in my head is &amp;quot;what&amp;#x27;s the magic word that I have to insert before I can branch my code?&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;This, I believe, it&amp;#x27;s why localized programming languages never catch on: because it solves a problem I don&amp;#x27;t have while bringing a new problem I &lt;i&gt;do&lt;/i&gt; have, namely, not being able to find support for my niche programming language.&lt;p&gt;Variable names and comments? Sure, &lt;i&gt;those&lt;/i&gt; are definitely prose. But I doubt anyone suffered too much when Python chose &amp;quot;elif&amp;quot; instead of &amp;quot;else if&amp;quot; (other than developers trying to remember whether a particular script should use &amp;quot;else if&amp;quot;, &amp;quot;elsif&amp;quot;, &amp;quot;elif&amp;quot;, or &amp;quot;|&amp;quot;).</text></item><item><author>Animats</author><text>Oh, it&amp;#x27;s just an art project.&lt;p&gt;We haven&amp;#x27;t yet seen a serious non-English programming language.  One would have expected one in Chinese or Japanese by now. There was COBOL in French, once, with French words and word order, but it never caught on, even in Francophone countries.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>dkersten</author><text>I always translate “for” in my head to: for each item x in...&lt;p&gt;In python is pretty direct: “for x in a” translates for for every x in the collection a, do this code...&lt;p&gt;In C it’s a bit more abstract:  “for (i=0; i&amp;lt;10; ++i)” for every i in the range starting at i=0, while it’s less than 10, incrementing... Basically  the body establishes a set or collection and the for loop executed the loop body “for” every item in the collection.&lt;p&gt;Modern languages often use foreach or some other slightly more descriptive name.</text></comment>