[~ot] why is programming so fun?

[Yigal Chripun]

Simen Kjaeraas wrote:
> On Sat, 07 Jun 2008 23:40:15 +0200, BCS <ao at pathlink.com> wrote:
> 
>> Reply to Yigal,
>>
>>> Thanks :) I learned here in Israel. English is taught as a required
>>> second language in Israel since we are a small country and that allows
>>> us to communicate with other nations.
>>> I doubt any foreigner that wants to do business here will learn
>>> Hebrew,
>>> therefore Knowing English is a required skill.
>>> the slight difference is probably due to different cultural thought
>>> patterns (I think in Hebrew...), maybe I'm yet another prove to the
>>> Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis <G>
>>
>> Cool. In one way that might give you an advantage over many people;
>> when you converse in English you are forced to construct a concept in
>> both languages. To do that I suspect that you will need to consider it
>> more carefully than many people do.
> 
> 
> I'm from Norway, and I speak a lot of english with my friends, as most
> programming books, articles, and whatnot we read, are in english, and
> there's little reason (except to exercise my language muscles) to
> translate when we all speak english pretty well. This use of english,
> and the fact 90% of what I read is in english (books, articles on the
> web, text in games, etc), has lead to english being a language I can
> think in. No translation to/from norwegian, no need to construct
> concepts in both languages, it's just there. The same thing goes for
> programming languages, I think. "Real programmers write FORTRAN in
> any language" accurately describes what happens when you don't know
> how to program effectively in a new language.

That may be true for you but this is not the case for many or even most
people. A few facts you need to factor in:
Norwegian is much closer to English than Hebrew in terms of languages
and another important fact is that humans tend to think with metaphors
and those are very much relative to culture and indeed your culture
itself is closer in terms of metaphors and thought patterns to English
than mine. A very good example where we can see such differences is all
the Chinese signs you see posted online where they tried to translate to
English (for the coming Olympics in Beijing) and got funny results like:
"Slip carefully" and such. equating it to Formal [context-free]
programming languages is simply wrong because their formality removes
all those complexities of natural languages.
Try to think how much harder it is for a Japanese person to /think/ in
English vs. a French or a German person. the difference is not only the
language but more importantly is the cultural concepts and metaphors
which differ significantly.
> 
>> I'm about to run into a similar situation; I am going to be writing a
>> program where it must be implemented in 2 different languages. As a
>> result I will need to be more aware of what is actually happening than
>> I otherwise would.
> 
> I've been doing something similar with assignments at school. We have a
> C++ beginner's course, and I've already taken a similar one elsewhere.
> So, I first write the assignment in C++, to satisfy my teacher. Then I
> translate it to assembly, python, D, or whatever other language I feel
> like at the moment. I think it's a good way to increase your knowledge
> of other languages, and really, it shouldn't take much more time.
> 
> -- Simen