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Mutual intelligibility of computer languages? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| laban Triglot Groupie Israel Joined 5824 days ago 87 posts - 96 votes  Speaks: Modern Hebrew*, English, Italian Studies: Norwegian, German | Message 9 of 20 30 December 2009 at 3:17pm | IP Logged | ||
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canada38 exactly, simply common factors between languages
as for which is the most intelligible? I meant, like for example if I were to take one language, which would be the one that would give me the most vast comprehension or at least some sence of other languages. Edited by laban on 30 December 2009 at 3:19pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| canada38 Tetraglot Senior Member Canada Joined 5497 days ago 304 posts - 417 votes Speaks: English*, Italian, Spanish, French Studies: Portuguese, Japanese | Message 10 of 20 30 December 2009 at 4:28pm | IP Logged | ||
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laban, I'm not sure if I understand your question completely, please tell me if I have
misunderstood. I don't know much about computer languages, but I have heard some things relating to this topic concerning human languages. I don't want to change the direction of this thread, this is just an aside. I think some languages can offer more value for expression in some areas, but they are lacking in others. For example, writing about advanced physics in the Inuktitut languages would probably be very hard to convey your meaning, without having to invent new terms or compound words. On the contrary, I have heard that the opposite is true for different types of snow. The Inuit have specific words for each type, whereas English must use adjectives to talk about different sorts of snow (slushy snow, snow that is good for packing, fluffy snow etc.) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| laban Triglot Groupie Israel Joined 5824 days ago 87 posts - 96 votes Speaks: Modern Hebrew*, English, Italian Studies: Norwegian, German | Message 11 of 20 30 December 2009 at 9:33pm | IP Logged | ||
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:D kinda confused me there with your example, and since nobody seems to get what i'm trying to say - it brings me to the conclution that maybe my English is getting worst - a point which i've noticed since I started using my Italian more and more.
that aside, let me try and give my own exmple and if it won't be clear enough after - i'll seriously have to consider banging my head in the wall :). lets say I would like to get a general sence or maybe even a good understanding of the scandinavian languages. from studies on the subject it seems to me that norwegian would probably be the best choice to start with since it got most common factors with the rest of the scandinavian languages thus giving me a better general understanding and a chance to quickly move onto other languages from the same family. now, same idea put to computer languages - learning C++ to know C,C# and java? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6441 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 12 of 20 09 January 2010 at 3:59am | IP Logged | ||
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If you can read a computer language, you can largely read closely related ones with similar syntax. Just as in natural languages, differences in the world view of the language or its idioms can confuse you or cause misinterpretation, as can syntactic differences.
If you can read ruby, you can read a fair chunk of python. Consider it analogous to the Romance (or Germanic, or Slavic) languages. If you can read C, C++, Java, or C#, the superficial syntactic similarities would probably give you a false sense of confidence: they have quite different "world views", and express very basic things in fairly different ways. Analogy: Indo-European languages that share a writing system, cognates, and a few philosophical pieces - but not much else. If you know C, and want to read SML or Smalltalk or Prolog or J... you will have a slight advantage over a non-programmer, but not much of one. Consider it similar to Korean or Inuktitut for a monolingual English speaker. There are families of computer languages; they vary in mutual intelligibility. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| doviende Diglot Senior Member Canada languagefixatio Joined 5988 days ago 533 posts - 1245 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Spanish, Dutch, Mandarin, Esperanto, Hindi, Swedish, Portuguese | Message 13 of 20 09 January 2010 at 6:44am | IP Logged | ||
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I don't even think it makes sense to call these things Computer "Languages". And in terms of time required to switch from one to another, I'd say that they're all "mutually intelligible" because once you're trained in using any of them, you can switch completely to any other one within a matter of days or weeks. You can usually at least figure out what's going on right away, even if you can't produce new code yet (hence mutually intelligible).
If you do a computing science degree, once you're past the basic concepts of 2nd year, the 3rd year course instructors expect that they can choose any computer language for that course, and you'll just pick it up as you go along and write all your assignments in it for the term. I think calling them "languages" just continues the common assumption that human languages can just be "picked up". I can confidently program in at least a dozen computer "languages", and I don't consider this to be any big deal for someone with computer training. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| numerodix Trilingual Hexaglot Senior Member Netherlands Joined 6785 days ago 856 posts - 1226 votes Speaks: EnglishC2*, Norwegian*, Polish*, Italian, Dutch, French Studies: Portuguese, Mandarin | Message 14 of 20 09 January 2010 at 11:32am | IP Logged | ||
I completely disagree. It's true that it's easier to switch between programming languages than natural languages, but it's not true to say you just learn the new syntax and grammar and voila you understand everything. Among languages that are closely related this holds true, but if you go from a language of one "kind" to another, you'll be completely lost, because the whole philosophy of the language is different. It's not made to do the same things you used to do in the first language. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Sennin Senior Member Bulgaria Joined 6036 days ago 1457 posts - 1759 votes 5 sounds | Message 15 of 20 09 January 2010 at 3:57pm | IP Logged | ||
I think Volte explains it quite well. To sum up, it is easy to learn a new programming language but difficult to learn a new "world view" ( what is called a programming paradigm ). Programming languages sharing the same paradigm are not really separate languages. They are more like "programming dialects", differing only in a superficial way. Some programming languages are profoundly different and the effort required to learn them is greater. It takes some time to get used to a new world view and figure out how to do things. In this case it is justified to talk about different "languages". ( That said, you don't have to learn a new writing system, how to pronounce things, there are no irregularities etc. Learning a new natural language can be more scary. ) Edited by Sennin on 09 January 2010 at 4:20pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| numerodix Trilingual Hexaglot Senior Member Netherlands Joined 6785 days ago 856 posts - 1226 votes Speaks: EnglishC2*, Norwegian*, Polish*, Italian, Dutch, French Studies: Portuguese, Mandarin | Message 16 of 20 09 January 2010 at 4:33pm | IP Logged | ||
1 person has voted this message useful |
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