Should there be an Esperanto of Programming Languages?

[Jerry]

Indian language computing makes impressive strides
Indo-Asian News Service
Panaji, October 29
 
Indian language computing is making impressive strides in the free software world, and tools for nine major languages are already in a state of fair functionality, say tech experts in the field.

"By 2004 Indian language computing should be well on its way, with solutions working in many languages," said G Karunakar, a prominent campaigner for non-English solutions in computing.

Full Story at:
http://www.hindustantimes.com/news/181_437473,00030010.htm

[Stiffler]

Great, now oter people's code will be even harder to read!?! I say that in the US the Language for programming should be English, and no other language. Oh boy, I see the flames coming.

Jon

[Michael Kennedy]

You'd see the flames on other sites, but probably not too badly here.  :)  I know we have quite a few non-English-for-a-first-language people here, but I for one won't argue.  :)

[Victor Cardona]

Well, ANSI/ISO agree with you.  The C and C++ standards state that all programming should be done in english.  Here is my question.  How are programmers in the US who work for companies doing that 24 hour programming thing.  You know where a company uses programmers in the US and Asia to literally program around the clock.  How are the programmers in the US supposed to read the Indian specific code?

Americans have been lucky.  The US has been the dominant power in the world throughout the computing age.  That forced everyone to learn english in order to program.  What happens now though, as the US's political and economic power begins to wane?

[Victor Cardona]

OK, I feel somewhat stupid and so should all other respondents.  The article was not talking about programming in any Indian languages.  It was talking about localization efforts that are taking place in India.  They are translating OS/Free software into several Indian languages.

[Guest]

You're assuming, of course, that American political and economic power is waning.

I'd like to see some examples of that.

Truth is, as much as cynics would like to compare the US to the Romans and thirst for our slide into the scrap heap of history, inertia is simply on our side.  The end of the Cold War has sealed the deal and left us as the only "superpower" left.  Superpower in terms of both economics and political clout.  Military is a subset of political will, so it's not really important in this context.

During the '80's, every cynic out there was screaming that the age of America was over, citing the Japanese and the German economies as the new Holy Grail for all countries to acheive...well, we've seen what's happened there.  Personally, it should suprise no one that Japan and German became such ardent competitors.  1) Who clobbered both of those countries in WWII?  2) Who rebuilt those countries?  3) Who freely gave sovereignty back to those countries (a historical first, btw)?

Point is, from '45 through the end of the sixties, both Japan's and Germany's economies where in strict rebuild-mode, using massive American planning, expertise, and capital.  They came out of it very efficient...lean and mean, if you will.  If you were to destroy our infrastructure and spend the better part of a century rebuilding it, we would be efficient as hell too.

The thing to remember is that the United States, with all it's foibles, is still dominant and better still, though critics hate to admit it, pretty benevolent in historical terms.  Just picture what the world would be like if we'd lost the Cold War to the USSR.

As to the language thing...(lol, original thread)...if some other culture or society becomes the leading innovator in computers, things will naturally shift in that direction and over time, professionals and specialists will be educated to cope.  Thinking that programming languages should be English-centric at this point in time is not vain or American elitism.  We designed the first working computers and the first working computer languages.  We built on that success at a frantic rate and continue to do so.  The fact that so much coding is going in India has less to do with one culture's dominance over another and more to do with Microsoft wanting cheap labor.  Speaking to and reading articles by current programming leaders in this country, the general view of overseas (read India) coding is held in the same esteem as Japanese and German cars were back in the 60's and 70's.  Cheap, efficient, but lacking in quality.

Draw the correlation.  As the Japanese and German cars got better and better, American car makers realized the competition and in turn got better and better.

Besides, it all seems moot to me anyway.  The code isn't the key, the design and innovation is.

[Jerry]

Actually, the first working computer was designed by Konrad Zuse in 1941. Here's a link to the history:
http://irb.cs.tu-berlin.de/~zuse/Konrad_Zuse/en/index.html

The Nazi's did not support his work. If they did the outcome of WWII might have been very different. The "Code Breaker" might have been written about Zuse instead of Turing.