[Python-3000] Support for PEP 3131 (original) (raw)

Arvind Singh arvind1.singh at gmail.com
Mon May 14 02:41:49 CEST 2007

On 5/14/07, Anders J. Munch <2007 at jmunch.dk> wrote:

You haven't brought any hard evidence to the table yourself, so in the absense of that, my anecdotal evidence trumps your pure speculation ;-)

Fact: Younger brains learn new concepts (and languages) faster than older ones. Argument: To be part of "international" programming community (or a real programmer), one has to learn English anyway, why help anyone develop a habit which he/she will have to discard later? [Indians usually deal with 3 languages in their childhood (English, Hindi, Sanskrit/local language).]

I've coded non-trivial stuff in three languages: Danglish, English and

Danish. Well, strictly speaking only the latter two are real langauages; Danglish is just a name for way Danish programmers typically write: A hodge-podge of Danish and English mixed with no apparent system, ever preferring whichever word springs to mind first, switching to (bad) English whenever the Danish alternative would need transliteration. Or worse, switching to a different but less appropriate Danish word that has the sole advantage of not needing transliteration.

This PEP talks about support for identifiers. If you need extensive vocabulary for your identifiers, I'd assume that you're coding something non-trivial (with ignorable exceptions). Such non-trivial code should be sharable under a common language that others can understand as well, IMHO.

Further, if you are doing something non-trivial, I can also assume that you'd be using third-party libraries. How would the code look if identifiers were written in various encodings?

I've found that using my native Danish is the better option of the

three because, unsurprisingly, I am are more productive using my native language than a foreign language. Do I really need to submit proof for that? Isn't that just obvious?

Not so obvious to me, actually. Ask any good user-interface designer, humans aren't (generally; since I see you as a "gifted" exception :-) ) good with "modal" interfaces. The more "modes" one has to shift among, the lesser the productivity, in general. Maybe you feel more productive because of lengthy "modes" or long pieces of code (i.e., looong functions): not a good programming practice, as I've been taught.

They mesh brilliantly. The different languages used means that the

provenance of identifiers is intuitively available: English identifiers means std. lib. or 3rd party, native language means in-house. Very helpful - my heart goes out to the poor suffering monolinguists who must do without this valuable code reading aid.

Since Hindi was mentioned, I'd like to say: Don't even think about it!

+1 on PEP 3131.

Without knowing whether I have a say or not:

-1 on this PEP

Regards, Arvind

-- There should be one-- and preferably only one --obvious way to choose your identifiers. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-3000/attachments/20070514/abb971d4/attachment.html

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