Re: Scheme, Lisp, and a Central Future

[Michael Vanier <address@hidden>]

I can't speak for Matthias, but if you're interested in this direction then
why limit yourself to Chinese characters?  The language APL used a whole
series of invented characters (most of which were adaptations of latin or
greek letters IIRC) to specify programs.  The modern version of APL (J) uses
mostly 2-character symbols that are non-alphanumeric.  The bias against
Chinese characters is mostly due to current keyboard limitations as well as
lack of knowledge of Chinese.  That said, I don't see that Chinese
characters buy you anything that you couldn't get from defining your own
symbols (unless you're Chinese, in which case you could get extra
terseness, for what that's worth).

Mike


> From: "Ronald D Stephens" <rdsteph@earthlink.net>
> Date: Tue, 25 Dec 2001 20:56:52 -0500
> 
> All my life I have wondered about something, about which I am too ignorant to do
> anything. Reading this fascinating list, I am moved to think that there may be some list members smart enough to do something about
> it. In doing so, they may create a future for Scheme, or something similar to Scheme, that could be quite bright and long lasting;
> so I'll mention the subject, and then go away and let you all ignore it, ridicule it, or discuss it. I'll not pretend to comment or
> add to any such discussion, since I am not qualified to do so.
> 
> A programming language could be created, based on Scheme, but using Chinese
> characters rather than the western alphabet. Western punctuation marks such as
> parentheses could be used to delineate the Chinese characters, but perhaps it would be "better" or "purer" to use significant spaces
> instead. The bottom line, though, would be to create a computer programming language that primarily uses Chinese characters.
> 
> There are several possible advantages to such a language:
> 
> 1. It might appeal to the 850 million or so Chinese whose first written language is Mandarin, as well as the millions of other
> educated Asians who are familiar with Chinese characters as well as their own native tongues (Japanese, Korean, etc.). After all,
> the Chinese written language is more than 3000 years old and has a great deal of cultural momentum.
> 
> 2. As far as I know, no programming language of any consequence has ever been created using Chinese characters, or using any Asian
> language as its base, for that matter. While using English-based progamming languages is perhaps of no great disadvantage to Asian
> programmers, there could still be a matter of pride, as well as practical utility in the primary educational area, to having a
> "native" language progamming language.
> 
> 3. Chinese characters, some of which, including the core "radicals" are ideographic in nature, may offer some benefits to
> programming languages:
> 
> a. Terseness: because the characters can express, in one symbol, as much as              several  English words, it could be that a
> Chinese-based language could be used     to write programs that are much shorter than equivalent programs in other
> languages.
> 
> b. GUI, event driven programming; Chinese characters could be especially good at
>     graphical programming. The few hundred core, or radical, characters, that are all     well known and memorized by all educated
> Asians, could be used to tersely                 represent a good selection of GUI widgets, as well as actions or methods to
> act upon those widgets.
> 
> Finally, a functional, highly recursive language might be a good fit for a Chinese-character based programming language. Ironically,
> Scheme, despite its parentheses, might be less punctuation-dependent than most languages. In particular, Scheme seems to lend itself
> quite well to a style of expression that is highly symbolic, highly abstract, and terse; Chinese characters can add to all three
> distinctions.
> 
> And, also ironically, the "common expectations" or bias of some western programmers towards procedural languages using C-like syntax
> will hardly be an issue with the billions of Chinese students being introduced to computer programming in the next century.
> 
> A very high level, highly symbolic, terse and efficient computer programming language could be a nice fit for the mathematical minds
> of east Asia. Such a language could be especially timely as we enter into an age of more complex graphical computing paradigms, and
> in a century in which China becomes the dominant economy of the world.
> 
> Anyway, what do you think, Matthias and others? You would need colleagues who are completely fluent in Mandarin and also in computer
> science, but they should be available in academia.
> 
> Why should the whole world, for all time, be shackled to the limitations of one European language and one alphabetic system? The
> alphabet is superior in many ways for its adaptability to various diverse and rapidly evolving spoken languages, but a future
> computer world is perhaps best served by a higher-level, more intensely symbolic, somewhat graphical, object oriented symbolic
> system that is not tied to any one spoken language, but rather ideally represents the underlying concepts.
> 
> The Arabic numerals we all use are already the defacto numerical system for China and all of Asia. A programming language using
> those numerals and Chinese characters as its only tokens could be a winner. While such a language need not be based on Sceme, but
> could be based on any other programming language, why not incorporate the best ideas in computer science into such a language?
> 
> 
> 
>