[Python-Dev] Needing help to change the grammar (original) (raw)

Jack diederich jackdied at gmail.com
Sat Apr 11 08:20:24 CEST 2009

On Fri, Apr 10, 2009 at 9:58 PM, Harry (Thiago Leucz Astrizi) <thiagoharry at riseup.net> wrote:

Hello everybody. My name is Thiago and currently I'm working as a teacher in a high school in Brazil. I have plans to offer in the school a programming course to the students, but I had some problems to find a good langüage. As a Python programmer, I really like the language's syntax and I think that Python is very good to teach programming. But there's a little problem: the commands and keywords are in english and this can be an obstacle to the teenagers that could enter in the course. Because of this, I decided to create a Python version with keywords in portuguese and with some modifications in the grammar to be more portuguese-like. To this, I'm using Python 3.0.1 source code.

I love the idea (and most recently edited PEP 306) so here are a few suggestions;

Brazil has many python programmers so you might be able to make quick progress by asking them for volunteer time.

To bug-hunt your technical problem: try switching the "not is" operator to include an underscore "not_is." The python LL(1) grammar checker works for python but isn't robust, and does miss some grammar ambiguities. Making the operator a single word might reveal a bug in the parser.

Please consider switching your students to 'real' python part way through the course. If they want to use the vast amount of python code on the internet as examples they will need to know the few English keywords.

Also - most python core developers are not native English speakers and do OK :) PyCon speakers are about 25% non-native English speakers and EuroPython speakers are about the reverse (my rough estimate - I'd love to see some hard numbers).

Keep up the Good Work,

-Jack

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