Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!wuarchive!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!mcsun!ukc!icdoc!sot-ecs!sra From: sra@ecs.soton.ac.uk (Stephen Adams) Newsgroups: comp.software-eng Subject: Re: Question on programming languages ("foreign" keywords) Message-ID:Date: 26 Sep 89 09:45:18 GMT References: <8720001@hplsla.HP.COM> <89267.181118UH2@PSUVM.BITNET> <16126@vail.ICO.ISC.COM> Sender: sra@ecs.soton.ac.uk Organization: Southampton University Computer Science Lines: 15 In-reply-to: rcd@ico.ISC.COM's message of 25 Sep 89 17:54:30 GMT In article <16126@vail.ICO.ISC.COM> rcd@ico.ISC.COM (Dick Dunn) writes: The reason that virtually all programming languages use English for keywords is simply to have one standard representation for programs. Trying to allow multiple languages gets you into portability problems. The anglo-centric view--like it or not, it's there--says that a language using keywords other than English doesn't stand a chance outside its own country. I know a couple of programmers who program in COBOL for a living and are glad that they dont have english as their first language. They rarely pick a variable name only to find that it is one of COBOLs hundreds of reserved words :-). -- Stephen Adams S.Adams@ecs.soton.ac.uk