Author Topic: Non-English programming questions - in English  (Read 4381 times)

Doug Clark

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Posts: 307
  • Karma: +7/-1
    • View Profile
Non-English programming questions - in English
« on: August 25, 2020, 06:29:09 am »
When non-English speakers write programs, such as Rexx, SQL or C, what language do they write in?

For example in SQL - in English a query looks like

SELECT column1, column2 FROM thisTable WHERE someCondition ORDER BY column3

Does a Spanish speaker or German speaker write the same thing, or do they write the Spanish/German words for SELECT FROM WHERE and ORDER BY?

Likewise in Rexx, does everyone write DO UNTIL and SELECT , or do they write their own language equivalents?

roberto

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 810
  • Karma: +3/-6
    • View Profile
Re: Non-English programming questions - in English
« Reply #1 on: August 25, 2020, 02:43:41 pm »
For example in SQL - in English a query looks like
SELECT column1, column2 FROM thisTable WHERE someCondition ORDER BY column3
This is 100% correct in Spanish
Problems usually arise with quotes, accents, double quotes, and some special character. Also sometimes with the decimal point or decimal point.
saludos

Martin Iturbide

  • OS2World NewsMaster
  • Global Moderator
  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 4714
  • Karma: +41/-1
  • Your Friend Wil Declares...
    • View Profile
    • Martin's Personal Blog
Re: Non-English programming questions - in English
« Reply #2 on: August 25, 2020, 03:48:55 pm »
Hi Doug.

The programming languages are in English (SQL, C, C++, Java, etc) and in Spain and Latin America we code the same way as the language allows it. The programming languages do not get translated, we use the same While, For, Do, Select, etc. As Roberto says we had to be careful with special characters.

The issues you may get reading code from a spanish developer may be that the variables and the comments are in spanish. It may be hard to understand what the program do with the variables in a different language.  Usually a programmer in Latin America needs to have good English skill (at least reading skills), to get the latest documentation and tutorials from the internet.

Regards
Martin Iturbide
OS2World NewsMaster
... just share the dream.

Olafur Gunnlaugsson

  • Full Member
  • ***
  • Posts: 244
  • Karma: +5/-0
    • View Profile
Re: Non-English programming questions - in English
« Reply #3 on: August 25, 2020, 05:06:27 pm »
When non-English speakers write programs, such as Rexx, SQL or C, what language do they write in?

For example in SQL - in English a query looks like

SELECT column1, column2 FROM thisTable WHERE someCondition ORDER BY column3

Does a Spanish speaker or German speaker write the same thing, or do they write the Spanish/German words for SELECT FROM WHERE and ORDER BY?

Likewise in Rexx, does everyone write DO UNTIL and SELECT , or do they write their own language equivalents?

IBM languages and the C class of languages in general were never fully localised, so they use English keywords but user generated input such as identifier names and so on may be in any language. A number of other languages especially those intended for end users rather than professionals such as BASIC, Comal, Pascal and LOGO are sometimes localised, LOGO in particular sees more use localised than in English. Some programming languages were originally in other natural languages and translated into English, so you may find code for PROLOG for instance in French and ALGOL was originally in German.

To make it more complicated some languages, in particular some database query systems and so on are partly localised, they use English keywords but defer to local conventions on number and word usage.

Doug Clark

  • Sr. Member
  • ****
  • Posts: 307
  • Karma: +7/-1
    • View Profile
Re: Non-English programming questions - in English
« Reply #4 on: August 26, 2020, 12:34:26 am »
Thanks all for your responses.

Mathias

  • Full Member
  • ***
  • Posts: 196
  • Karma: +2/-0
  • using ArcaOS
    • View Profile
    • IRC
Re: Non-English programming questions - in English
« Reply #5 on: August 26, 2020, 02:28:39 pm »
As for German:
Programming commands are all in English. Havn't seen any exception but Excel 2000 VBA, which all of sudden had german commands, rendering all english sources useless as they weren't understood all of sudden anymore. Microsoft had learned from that disaster.. and so even for Excel: English commands everywhere (besides the possibility of using German ones).

As your example covers SQL: Yes, all in English, but as already said, international numbering might differ... like for instance the one-thousand divider in DE is . while in US and UK it is , --> 1.000 (EN would be 1,000)
In DE the numbers behind a full number are separated by , --> like 12,3 (EN would be 12.3)

Besides that, there should be no difference in programming.