Fresh Hacker News | Draig, a Welsh Programming Language

▲Draig, a Welsh Programming Language(raku.land)

21 points by librasteve 2 days ago | 6 comments

Can't wait for a Raku implementation of Lingua::Romana::Perligata.

▲benrutter 2 hours ago

This is neat! People who like this might be interested in the awesome Hedy language[0]. It's purpose is education, but it's a single programming language with lots of localisations. Always suprised this idea isn't pursued more elsewhere.

[0] https://www.hedy.org/

▲librasteve 2 days ago

Richard (the dev) has wrote a good "how to" post on the creation process

https://dev.to/finanalyst/creating-a-new-programming-languag...

▲librasteve 2 days ago

Question: is it a good idea to introduce kids to coding in their mother tongue like this?

▲zabzonk 2 hours ago

i've always given the advice "program in english, comments, variables, function names, everything", and "always use a uk/us keyboard unless you absolutely have to enter localised strings, and even better get someone else to do that"

▲mbork_pl 22 minutes ago

I've been working with a codebase for a very specific domain where hardly anyone even knew the English terms for the domain-specific things (and some of them probably didn't even exist - highly localized customs etc.). No point in using English then.

▲AnonC 1 hour ago

I’ve seen before that this is not followed in certain cases, such as the entire development team being in a specific country where some or many team members don’t know English (well enough). As an anecdote, I’ve seen a team in a large multinational company (US origin) in Spain that used function names, variable names, database table names (and column names), log message text and many other things in Spanish. English was only for the language keywords because that’s what the compiler would accept.

▲cmwelsh 1 hour ago

China disregards that and there is an absolutely massive ecosystem of Free and Open Source Software out there if you can read and write their code.

▲zabzonk 1 hour ago

I know little about china (except i like the food and art) but do they actually write code in their native language(s)?!

▲anonymous908213 0 minutes ago

I wouldn't expect that to be the norm. I can only speak for Japan, but I suspect China is the same. In Japan, English programming is the norm because all mainstream programming languages are written in English. Keywords, popular libraries and often documentation are in English, so there's not really any getting around the fact that you have to learn to read at least some English. Some Japanese developers do write identifiers etc. in Japanese where languages support it.

I, personally, think this is a lamentable state of affairs that raises the barrier to entry for programming, especially for children. There are education-oriented Japanese programming languages that try to fill the niche for teaching children, but I think it would be beneficial if there were serious languages with a full ecosystem rather than one designed to be training wheels before learning English programming languages.

▲throwA29B 1 hour ago

No. You want 'for' to be a looping construct with no other meanings.

Seeing code in my native language makes me laugh, I can't take it seriously.

▲anonymous908213 15 minutes ago

I strongly disagree.

  foreach (apple in fruitbasket)
    apple.Eat()

vs.

  for (int i = 0, while i < fruitBasket.Count, i++)
    fruitbasket[i].Eat()

Even as a low-level programmer, I truly loathe C-style for loops. It takes several seconds to parse them, while the C#-style foreach is instantly grokkable with zero mental overhead. When you're scanning over thousands of lines of codes, the speed and ease of reading constructs like these adds up and makes a huge difference. The desire to apply human-friendly syntax to low-level programming is among the greatest motivating factors for the language I'm working on. All of that being said, I think there is a huge advantage in having code that reads like natural language you understand, rather than have keywords that are foreign and meaningless to you.

▲culi 1 hour ago

As someone who's spoken English since 5, I'm perplexed by this question. I'm genuinely unfamiliar with any perceived downsides and I would love to hear more of your thoughts

▲zabzonk 2 hours ago

whenever you would use 'l', you have to use 'll'?

i'llll get my coat

▲afavour 43 minutes ago

I know it’s just a joke but the “ll” in Welsh is a completely distinct character in the Welsh alphabet and doesn’t sound anything like “l”, nor is it used as a substitute for l. It’s rarely used but it has its own Middle-Welsh character: ỻ

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ll

▲zabzonk 35 minutes ago

> I know it’s just a joke

Yeah, sorry, I couldn't resist. I'm not Welsh but I lived there when I was a small child, and happily holidayed there after. It is a great country.

▲lagniappe 1 hour ago

429 - Too many requests