It just can only get better!

[Alejandro Tejada]

Xavier Bury wrote:
>I've seen HyperTalk in French (or was it 
>applescripts) and it really sucked and made
>everything 
>much more confusing and hard to maintain. Latin
>languages are not as nice for programming I guess. 

So even in Europe it's true:
English and Computers.

Maybe that's the real explanation for
the great number of Computer graduated
from Universities of this country that
are not living from their careers.
They could not advance in their profession
without knowledge of english.

By the way, What would be the state of the
computer science if the main language of development
and discoveries were, for example, french or german or
japanese or italian or russian?

Just for curiosity, Can you send me some links
in the WWW to check for the equivalent terms between
french applescript and english applescript.

>> Who could benefit more of the availability of a
>> computer language similar to their mother language?

One of the possible answer is:
Anyone who want to learn to program...

Scott Raney has put excellent arguments in his
website:

http://www.metacard.com/pi6.html

"MetaTalk is the perfect language
for beginning computer programmers 
or anyone with an interest in programming, 
because it so closely resembles English."
[ snip ]
"The logical thought process learned in
MetaTalk Programmer can easily be applied
when learning another programming language,
or when working in a logical mathematics 
area such as Algebra."

I will add that MetaTalk could have closely
resemble any other language if the original
language of the parent of the script languages
(Smalltalk) had not been english.
Could had existed HyperTalk, SuperTalk and MetaTalk
in other languages, besides english?

By the way, Did you notice how our societies
are affected by twisted logical thinking?...

In fact, It must be easier to translate to other
languages because really exists a model proven and
functional.

If your translation doesn't work, look at the
original.
One fatal mistake could be to pretend to cover more
ground than the original model. 

A simple example:
someone could suggest that if-then-else structures
could be read in reverse order to resembles more
a naturally "spoken language":

put the text of field 1, if lvflag is empty

Actually this must be written as:

if lvflag is empty then put the text of field 1

That's only one example. Experienced users could
offer more meaningful examples...

The point that I want to emphasize is:
Translation of MetaTalk to other language could be
more strict in the gramatical constructions and
naming conventions, NOT sloppier: i.e.

all the global variables must start with vg like
"vgTexto12",
every if-then-else structure must be closed with an
"end if" declaration, etc...
 
>> You write in your native language and
>> the editor takes care of translating to english for
>> the MC engine.
>That's better... it can be done... But would you
start
>programming in spanish to see it all translated after
>in English? Seems like a waste of time. You get used 
>to type in english, you shouldn't break that habit I 
>believe. It's kind of very counterproductive 
>longterm...

No change for me, it's an easy starting point for
beginners, so this project must run within the 10
lines
limit of the starter kit...

Paste these links in your
textPad and edit each of them to
fit in only one line. 

Check for this articles:

Are scripting languages the wave of the future?
ITworld.com
http://www.itworld.com/AppDev/1262/itw-0314-rcmappdevint/

http://www.softpanorama.org/Scripting/index.shtml

and there are more articles like these.

>> To be fair, error reporting could be a real
problem,
>> and parsing for valid gramatical contructions could
>> add time to the error checking routines,
>> but if you could write code that differenciate
>> between 
>> functions, commands, globals, locals, properties,
>> custom properties ,etc... then it's not impossible.
>Would you like to try fixing "just" the "if-then"
>autocompletion routines I got? It's definitely not 
>fun... Grammar parsing is yet
>another step above in programming lexical analysers 
>than it is parsing simple and stupid code 
>statements...

Autocompletion...
Did you notice that you are trying to get ahead of the

built in error checking routines?...
in my humble opinion.

>> I'm thinking about a paired table of values
>> to be replaced:
>> For example...Only an example...
>> on=al
>> end=fin
>> pass=pasa
>> show=muestra
>> hide=oculta
>> very long etc...
>That's easy enough...

Of course, probably this has been discussed before,
but I have not found practical results on the web.

>> Good luck and hard work.
>No, smart work = less work!

You have it right!
That's the difference between
a hobbist and a professional.

Alejandro

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