The number of keywords and their "origin language" does not matter much, that is something we probably can all agree to, especially with the very few kewords in Go.
But if you try to teach 9 or 10 year old kids to program you cannot do this in the language alone, you need at least to import fmt. And while the handful of keywords are not a problem at all the packages used to do interesting things (for a 9 year old) are in English only. Of course I would never advocate to program in Bavarian, or cuneiform, but if you are starting to learn a real programming language than there _is_ a language barrier. And this barrier is in addition to typing on a keyboard and the math and the logic and everything else. Because of this real problem I thought about some package basic which could be an atypical collection of useful functions for educational purpose: Very simple input and output functions, graphic functions (like points, lines, ellipses, rectangles), a bit of sound (like 12 different tones and two beeps) with exported identifiers and the godoc in the child's first language so that a very young student can explore what is possible in a more appealing way than just println-based output. V. On Monday, 29 April 2019 11:10:28 UTC+2, Max wrote: > > I am Italian, and I learned to program quite early - before really knowing > English. > > In my experience, the fact that most programming languages use English > keywords is not a big obstacle - for two reasons: > 1) each programming language has very few reserved keywords - dozens at > most, compared to thousands of words you need to know in a new foreign > language. > 2) a programming language is a **language** anyway, so the effort is > mostly in learning the meaning of each keyword, its syntax, and how to use > it. > > Having said that, English speakers have great advantages when studying > programs documentation, as most languages and libraries are **documented** > and commented in English. > But in my opinion the fragmentation created by "everyone writes programs, > comments and docs in its own language" would be **much** worse. > > For reference, some years ago at work I had to integrate a program written > in German - identifiers, function names, even comments were in German. > It was a nightmare, and it took months even with help from other (Italian) > people that knew the program and the meaning of each identifier and > function. > > Regards, > cosmos72 > > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "golang-nuts" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to golang-nuts+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
