Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!watcgl!kim
From: kim@watsup.waterloo.edu (T. Kim Nguyen)
Newsgroups: can.general
Subject: French programming languages
Message-ID: 
Date: 14 Aug 89 20:18:25 GMT
References: <89Aug3.145600edt.10404@neat.cs.toronto.edu>
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In-reply-to: gilles@alberta.uucp's message of 13 Aug 89 20:42:35 GMT

In article <1989Aug13.204235.18993@alberta.uucp> gilles@alberta.uucp (Gilles Simon Dionne) writes:

   In article  kim@watsup.waterloo.edu (T. Kim Nguyen) writes:
   >I once got a close look at the French-ized version of Logo.  It was
   >absolutely incomprehensible.

   Perhaps, you can't understand French ? This does make it much harder to
   comprehend!! :-)

I forgot to mention that French is my maternal language (and, yes, I
am fluent in it, written and oral)!!!

   >Perhaps the French have gone on with their language conversion, but if
   >they have, they are simply heading for a dead end, because no one else
	       ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
   >in the world will use that language but them, not when even the
   >Japanese use the English versions.
   >--
     Why? Do you care if your favorite software package is written in C, Pascal
   or Modula II or directly in assembler ? You don't see what's inside so
   what is the difference to you? I believe it is the same for "French" or
   "English" programming languages. If they write the "best" software on the
   market, why should they have problems selling it? Maintenance by local
   people you say? 

Hmm.  My research bias shows itself here.  I was thinking of papers
published in journals, say, on artificial intelligence.  If some
research group decided to use a French version of Lisp then I would
have difficulty understanding their program.  Of course, the same
happens if that group wrote the program in a completely different
language that they invented.  The point I was trying to make is that
to communicate, we might want to keep to some sort of
language/conceptual framework standard.

--
Kim Nguyen 					kim@watsup.waterloo.edu
Systems Design Engineering  --  University of Waterloo, Ontario, Canada