[WikiEN-l] MediaWiki is getting a new programming language

[stevertigo]

On Thu, Jul 2, 2009 at 7:23 PM, <wjhonson at aol.com> wrote:
> The language chosen will hopefully be as ENGLISH-like as possible, even it that
> means it requires more typing.? The hyper-complex and excessively structured
> codes of most languages make it difficult for the vast majority of our contributors to
> even try to make a break into them.
> In addition to that, English-like languages are easier for programmers in other
> languages to pick up because they seem more sensible than learning a whole new
> set of obscure codewords and symbols.? A language that uses "AND" instead of
> "&", "+" or "[]".? A language that uses "NOT" instead of "-", "/" or "_".

It's easy to be a native English speaker and then demand another
system to be parasitic to it. Note that if "English" itself isn't
sufficient where "English" lacks the required (programming) concepts.
And there's probably no issue of using Farsi or Bengali anyway, as
all/most programming languages are already parasitic to English. (Lua,
mentioned previously, written by Brazilians, does not use Portuguese
for anything other than its name).

Part of the idea to begin with for using arbitrary symbols for
operator symbols is to strengthen the projections between programming
and mathematics, and maybe also in a certain way to transcend natural
language peculiarities. It's not about efficiency == parasitism to
English, but its about representing computing as mathematics. AIUI. Of
course the ASCII dependency issue puts characteristic limitations
(what WJ calls "easier") on things, but that's out of scope.

-Steve