Whither Tango?

[Justin Johansson]

Nick Sabalausky wrote:
> "Justin Johansson" <no at spam.com> wrote in message 
> news:hlov1c$12sr$1 at digitalmars.com...
>> Nick Sabalausky wrote:
>>> "Justin Johansson" <no at spam.com> wrote in message 
>>> news:hlop1u$o1m$1 at digitalmars.com...
>>>> Nick Sabalausky wrote:
>>>>> Right, that's what I meant. Use a word starting with "retro-" when 
>>>>> talking to a english-speaking person, and even if they're uneducated, 
>>>>> they'll most likely have a good idea what is meant by that prefix.
>>>> What about persons with English not as a first language?
>>>>
>>> I do realize that different native languages can be an issue, but at some 
>>> point a library has to use *some* language, and the established standard 
>>> for phobos just happens to be english. If we start banning terms from use 
>>> in a language or a library on the basis of whether a non-native english 
>>> speaker is likely to know it, then I suspect (though I admit that I don't 
>>> know for certain) you'd have to eliminate most of the given 
>>> language/library because there's no guarantee non-native speakers would 
>>> know any of it.
>>>
>>> For instance, if there were a russian-langauge library, and I tried to 
>>> use it, I wouldn't understand any of the words except nyet and da (and 
>>> I'm not even sure of the correct spellings of those - in either roman or 
>>> cyrillic). And I would be well aware that I wouldn't be able to assume I 
>>> knew what something did without a little digging. Of course, I certainly 
>>> sympathize that this can be a pain for non-native-english-speaking 
>>> programmers, and that it's an issue native english speaking programmers 
>>> like me will probably never be able to truly understand, but until we get 
>>> to some hypothetcal point in the future where everyone speaks the same 
>>> language, then, again, at some point there really is no choice but to 
>>> just assume at least some particular language.
>>>
>>> Besides, computer terminology is already, at best, just a bunch of vague 
>>> meaphors anyway. When I started programing, it took me all of about a 
>>> minute to learn that "string" had nothing to do with the stuff cloth is 
>>> made of and stitched together with. And "SCSI" doesn't mean a damn thing 
>>> at all, even to an english speaker, but I still learned it quickly 
>>> enough. So even if I wasn't familiar with "retro" as anything other than 
>>> "old style", I'm sure I still could have gotten used to it very quickly, 
>>> especially considering that in 99.99% of contexts it's going to be pretty 
>>> damn clear that it's not being used to refer to bell-bottoms, chome 
>>> appliances, and flock-of-seagulls haircuts.
>>>
>> One famous mathematician, in writing to another famous mathematician,
>> once wrote "I apologize for the length of this letter, but I don't have
>> time to be brief".
>>
>> So question is, are you the former famous mathematician?
>>
>>
> 
> Heh :) No, but one time I did have a college professor refer to my writing 
> style as "constipated". Can't say I disagreed ;)
> 

Oh, Nick, that's a bit unkind of your prof; in any case I don't see a
connection between "constipated" and "voluminous".  Keep on writing;
you have an amusing style as well as the occasional valid point :-)