Using English Language In Programming

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Of the approximately eighty-five thousand programming languages that exist, roughly one-third are in English. In the world of computing, English is the lingua-franca. At the time when the concept of programming came to fruition, it was due to the technical limitations of computers English had to be used. But with the advancement of technology it became seemingly possible to use other languages as well. Even though this was now possible, most programmers, even though they aren’t native English speakers, have stuck to using English for programming. One of the major reasons for this is the fact that English serves as the lingua franca in communication. Therefore, it is obvious that to make programs be used in programing as it will enable the source…show more content…
Its syntax majorly contains English words such as “INVOKE”, “AND”, “OR”, “RETURNING” etc. When these programming languages were created, the ones who developed them were from countries that spoke English as their first language. But they intended to create it in such a manner that anyone could use it, even those who did not speak English as their first language. Also using English allowed these people from different languages to collaborate their ideas. The use of the English language as a medium of programming provides a common base for people to present their ideas on a common platform. This prevents what we call “Lost in Translation”. Programming in many ideas causes conflicts of the variables and commands used, that is, the syntax becomes clouded. Using a single language will keep it uniform for everyone to read and understand and English is the most suitable option for this. It is commonly seen that when programmers write the code of a program in their native language and then translate it to English, so that they could run it on various other platforms, a lot of the code becomes invalid. For example, Spanish or Swedish words when used to name objects or variables in a program lose their accents and tildes. And when this is translated to English these words become invalid and the program cannot be executed. Hence keeping code in English renders it useful…show more content…
This creates a problem; the statements would always have a different meaning depending on the context. And having multiple languages to program would further escalate this situation because unlike a human who would speak the language, a machine could not be able to interpret its true meaning. Therefore, an artificial language is needed for efficient communication with a machine. Rick Briggs, a NASA researcher published a paper in 1985, stating that there was a natural language which could, theoretically, serve as an artificial language. A suitable artificial language must be able to be broken down into series or an array of data, be easy to compile, comprehensible, the output and input similar and it must contain a minimum amount of deviations. And in fact, Sanskrit proved to do all of these. So why was it that Sanskrit never gained popularity as a language of programming. It was not only because the time and energy spent in teaching programmers this language would enormous, but the fact that programmers were very comfortable with using the English language and wanted to continue using it. As scientific Sanskrit was, it was an ancient language that was limited to a selected group. So simply put, as the Americans say “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix
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