Is English the Only Programming Language?

bishop101 · 04 May 2011

I was wondering about the implications that would arise from this. I've read that Hindu is an up and coming program language, and that there is a lot of programming done in Russian in Eastern Europe due to the Soviet isolation, but I'd imagine that for the most part English is the dominant language, and the most complicated software to write would be written in English.

By implications I mean stuff such as National Security, Military Applications, and Financial Institutions. I don't know much about this topic, but I think it would be a liability if a foreign country were to outsource the coding of such programs to English speakers who might end up being a mole, or perhaps they have natives who speak English as a second language. That makes me think that this will make coding less efficient and they could miss a few things. I know there are a lot of brilliant computer techs whose second language is English and are quite successful, - Chinese hackers who compromise US networks- but I'd imagine they would have to be very proficient with the English language.

I've read for example that most unsecured networks are foreign because they don't set it up properly or maintenance is neglected. So how do other countries do it? It's a question I find intriguing.

Is there programming done in Chinese? Since we're on the topic.

nitroman84 · 05 May 2011

I am by far no guru on the subject, but the language in question needs to be interpreted by the compiler. On that basis the language you choose to program in would be the same whether you speak English natively or not. The only difference would be the comments explaining what the code does.

kado897 · 05 May 2011

Thirty years ago I administered a package that was partly written in Spanish Cobol. The keywords were still English but the variables and labels were Spanish. It made interesting work debugging and modifying it. The line I remember most clearly.

GOTO ERRORE GRAVE.

arkhi · 05 May 2011

There's lolcode if you're interested. :)

nitroman84 · 05 May 2011

kado897 said:

Thirty years ago I administered a package that was partly written in Spanish Cobol. The keywords were still English but the variables and labels were Spanish. It made interesting work debugging and modifying it. The line I remember most clearly.

GOTO ERRORE GRAVE.

Thanks, I stand corrected.

To be honest I have wondered this myself but assumed compilers would only understand the language the syntax was originally dreamed up in.

kado897 · 05 May 2011

The language was still English just the variables Spanish. There was a typo in my post. It should have been.

GOTO ERRORE-GRAVE.

GOTO the keyword in English. ERRORE-GRAVE the label in Spanish.

Just to make matters worse another part of the package was written in German Assembly language. Again the OP Codes were English. Everything else was German.

nitroman84 · 05 May 2011

kado897 said:

The language was still English just the variables Spanish. There was a typo in my post. It should have been.

GOTO ERRORE-GRAVE.

GOTO the keyword in English. ERRORE-GRAVE the label in Spanish.

Just to make matters worse another part of the package was written in German Assembly language. Again the OP Codes were English. Everything else was German.

Sounds like a real nightmare to make sense of!

kado897 · 05 May 2011

Yes it was especially as neither Cobol nor Assembler was my primary programming language and I failed miserably in language exams at school.

nitroman84 · 05 May 2011

kado897 said:

Yes it was especially as neither Cobol nor Assembler was my primary programming language and I failed miserably in language exams at school.

Better than me, I'm just kicking around the idea of Fortran which (I'm sure) is about as basic as it gets.

kado897 · 05 May 2011

Actually Fortran was the first programming language I learned 35 years ago. At that time it was Fortran if you were "Scientific", Cobol if you were "commercial", Algol if you were a Geek and Assembler if you needed speed. I haven't used it since. It was pretty basic but I'm sure it must have improved a lot since then.