[~ot] why is programming so fun?

[BCS]

Reply to Simen,

> On Sat, 07 Jun 2008 23:40:15 +0200, BCS <ao at pathlink.com> wrote:
> 
>> 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.

Interesting. Have you ever tried using that ability (to think an several 
languages) while solving problems? "I'm stuck, lets switch to another language 
and see if anything happens". I known for instance that the Navaho (it might 
be some other tribe's) language is well suited for talking about relativity 
(or some other type of physics)

p.s. I'd do research on this but it's so far down my list of things to do... 
<G>