[axod]

np :) and apologies for taking the comments off topic.

Do linguists agonize over language efficiency as much as some programmers do? For example, writing English is maybe far more letters/strokes than Japanese (idk), but we don't all start learning Japanese and bash English.

[natrius]

If the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis is true, then they should if they don't already. If the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis is true for programming languages, then our agonizing is perfectly reasonable.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sapir–Whorf_hypothesis

[whacked_new]

I often get jumped on for my views, but S-W is true, and untrue. Untrue in that absence of a direct expression implies absence of concept; true in that absence of a direct expression impedes such an expression, such that it is less likely to get used, and hence, less efficient, and less likely to be conceived.

And I certainly agree that S-W applies for human and computer languages alike.

[whacked_new]

From what I have seen (not much, but probably more than most programmers), they don't. I suspect the reason is because everybody has at least one native spoken language, but programming languages are not native in the same way; they are acquired, and so are not perceived as a necessity.

And as such, for most people it is much harder to have a "favorite spoken language" that they can use as a platform to bash other languages. The way that programmers, text editor users, and coffee drinkers bash each other is bashing someone for an acquired taste. Bashing other languages is almost like bashing someone's physical appearance, and the immaturity becomes very obvious a lot quicker.

Also, regarding compactness of the spoken language, on average, English is longer than, say, Chinese. But brevity is NOT the goal. The tradeoff is redundancy, which English has much more of (e.g. parallelism and verb/plurality agreement). Old Chinese, with all its homophones, has plenty of texts written so compactly that if you don't read the text you will not understand it (at least for modern pupils).

[10ren]

I'm just imagining an anti-English troll, extolling the virtues of Japanese. Actually, Outliers makes the point that Korean has logical words for numbers, which makes maths a bit more accessible. I have to agree, I mean "eleven, twelve". I was irritated with the nonsensical naming of numbers as a child, especially when people said that mathematics was logical.