Tag Archives: language

Someone suggested that my Five Eyes Flag would work as a flag for the English language. While this isn’t quite right—any flag for the English language would have to include Ireland, probably South Africa, and arguably many other places (Belize, India, etc.)—it got me thinking what languages could use a flag of their own.

It would have to be a language (officially) spoken in more than one, but not more than a handful of countries. French, Spanish & Arabic are too widely spoken, and there are already a boatload of bad flags for the German language. So I decided to try designing a flag for the Chinese language.

Chinese is the official language of five polities, symbols from whose flags appear on this flag, atop a color also taken from their flag. In order from left to right, they are Singapore, Macau, Hong Kong, The Republic of China (a.k.a. Taiwan), and The People’s Republic of China (a.k.a. just China). The symbols are arranged in an arc that mirrors the geographic locations of the five in east Asia, from Singapore in the south, to Taiwan off the east coast of mainland China.

Also, note that I said polities and not countries: Macau and Hong Kong are technically not countries but Special Administrative Regions of China, and Taiwan is not widely recognized as a country. There’s lots to be offended about by this flag; not only the animosity between China and Taiwan but the fact, pointed out to me by a friend, that the flag of Taiwan is actually the flag of the KMT, the dominant political party there.

I hereby release this flag into the public domain so it may stoke the flames of many internet flame wars. Enjoy!

There’s no such things as bugs or features

Unless you’ve only ever worked with technical people, you’ve run into the old “is it a bug or is it a feature” argument. Generally, a business person reports something as a bug because it’s not working properly, but the reaction from technical people is that that particular feature just isn’t built yet or that specific detail was not in the original specification. This can be a source of great friction because it usually involves technical people saying the product will take longer than expected to finish. Less often, business will report a problem as a new feature, but the problem is already-built code that is just not functioning properly. This is less contentious because it usually means it’s less work to fix than business originally thought.

Is there a way to eliminate this debate?

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Two new projects: German Grammar and Möbius

I’ve been hacking on two new projects in my spare time.

The German Grammar Explorer (mainly the German Declension Explorer) is helping me wrap my head around some of the more complex patterns in the German language. It’s also an experiment in deliberate synæsthesia; It uses a palette of eight colors plus white to color-code similar patterns and related morphosyntax. The idea is to give a general feeling for when the general patterns of the language are broken.

Möbius is a totally useless experiment in binding scroll events and doing funny stuff with them, and experimenting with some newer features of HTML 5 and CSS 3.

Thought-provoking JavaScript articles

Prototype.js developer Kangax has some good JavaScript articles on his blog, including one about delete in JavaScript and another about subclassing Arrays.

Grasping the nuclear fourth rail of Python syntax with both hands and holding on for dear life

In Python vs. Ruby: A Battle to The Death, Gary Bernhardt wishes for Ruby-style blocks in Python.

The BDFL has already weighed in on anonymous blocks in Python:

If you want anonymous blocks, by all means use Ruby. Python has first-class callables,¹ Ruby has anonymous blocks. Pick your favorite, but don’t whine that neither language has both. It ain’t gonna happen.

This seems to imply that first-class callables and anonymous blocks are mutually exclusive language features, but that’s wrong: JavaScript has the ability to pass callables around like anything else, and it has anonymous functions, which can be used just like Ruby’s anonymous blocks. Does that mean JavaScript is better than Python or Ruby? My feelings about Ruby are indifferent with a chance of rain, but I love Python, so I’ve got to ask: are you going to take this lying down, Python?

I’m not sure Python needs full-blown, Ruby-style anonymous blocks. But it might be good enough to be able to use function definitions as r-values, like JavaScript can. (If you’re not already wearing your tinfoil hat, now might be a good time to put it on.)

This would allow asynchronous code to be written in conceptual order (just like in JavaScript):

do_something_asynchronous(param1, param2, (def callback(result):
    do_something_with_result(result)
))

And it would allow encapsulation of lexical scope inside specific iterations of a loop to be used later when an asynchronous call returns (just like in JavaScript):

for item in results:
    (def single_iteration():
        do_something_asynchronous(param1, item, (def callback(result):
            do_something_with_result_and_item(item, result)
        ))
    )(item)

I’ve even had occasion to want that other Python namespace, class, to operate as an r-value:

class MyConverterClass(BaseConverterClass):
    my_converter_type = (class MyConverterType(float):
        def __str__(self): # a custom __str__ method
            return '%0.2f' % self
    )

In these examples I’ve wrapped their inline definitions in Python’s great syntactical equalizer, the parenthesis. It would be even nicer to be able to leave them off, but I’m sure that this syntax would run headlong into Python’s whitespace-based block definitions, and it would be even more of a train-wreck without parentheses.

I’ve also named the defs and classes. It would also be nice to be able to omit the function or class names if they were unneeded (just like in JavaScript). But anonymous functions, a.k.a. lambdas, are the electric third rail of Python syntax, so anonymous classes would be… I dunno, the nuclear fourth rail?

Thanks to Steve for explaining that by “first-class callable,” GvR means functions that can be passed around and assigned to other variables without being executed. He also pointed out that the reason Ruby’s callables aren’t first-class is because optional parentheses in function calls leave no way to refer to a function without calling it, not because of the existence of anonymous blocks. [↩]

How to avoid sounding like a total asshole when talking about the internet, even though you actually have no idea how it works

Alternate title: I know it’s time to get out of the house when I start exercising my license to practice linguistics.

The mainstream media and people who are not internet-savvy have radically different uses of the verbs log in, log on, click on, download and upload.

The common, internet-savvy definitions for log in/on and click on are:

log in, log on: to identify yourself and gain access to a resource on a computer by providing authenticating information.

click on: to press the mouse button down and then release it, while the mouse pointer is over a visible link, menu item, or icon or other resource on the computer screen.

The non-internet-savvy use appears to simply be shorthand for the verb go or visit. For example, an announcer on the evening news might say:¹

For more details on this story, log on to our website at www….

No identifying information is needed to allow access to the news’ website; the intended meaning is simply to visit. The particle constructions click on and click on to also are occasionally also used with this same intended meaning:

For more details on this story, click on to our website at www….

For more details on this story, click on our website at www….

The news announcer wouldn’t be reading out the website address unless the listener needed to type it in first. Since the address isn’t going to be visible on the listener’s screen until they type it in, there’s nothing to click on. And once the listener is finished typing it in, they’ll be automatically taken to the site when they push enter. And in no modern browser is the website address ever clickable. So this usage of click on has the meaning of go or visit as well.

The internet-savvy uses of download and upload are deictic, like the verbs send and recieve, or come and go. That is, their meaning is dependent on the location of the agent performing the action:

download: to cause electronic data, files, or other information to move towards the agent, generally over a network.

upload: to cause electronic data, files, or other information to move away from the agent, generally over a network.

For example, consider two people, Alice and Bob. Alice is working from home and Bob is at the office. If Alice is going to transfer a file from her computer at home to a computer at office, where Bob is, they would both use upload, because the data is moving away from the agent, Alice:

Bob: Can you upload today’s TPS reports?

Alice: Sure. I’ll let you know when they’re done uploading.

Download in place of upload would mean that the TPS reports² were on the computer at the office, and Alice was transferring them to her computer at home:

Bob: Can you download today’s TPS reports?

Alice: Sure. I’ll let you know when they’re done downloading.

Similarly, if Bob were the one initiating the action of obtaining the information from Alice’s computer, he would use download, and if he were sending the information to Alice’s computer, he would use upload.³

The non-internet-savvy usage of download simply means transfer. It has no deictic component and encompasses the net-savvy meaning of upload and download, as well as that of simple copying:

Once this file is finished downloading to my Hotmail I’ll download it to you in an email.

I downloaded the photos from the CD to my computer and now they won’t load.

Unsurprisingly, upload does not seem to be present in the non-internet-savvy dialect; possibly because download encompasses its meaning entirely.

Although there are probably more differently-used terms, these four usage differences are more than enough for internet-savvy speakers to identify non-internet-savvy speakers. Generally the internet-savvy speakers then make the same kind of assumptions that adults make about children who mimic and misuse words they’ve just learned — specifically, that the speaker has no idea what the words he or she is using actually mean, and therefore no idea what he or she is talking about.

Sounding internet-savvy is easy; then, even if you’re not. Use visit instead of log in/log on when the user doesn’t actually have to identify themselves to use a website or other resource. Don’t use click on unless there’s actually something to click on. And think about where the data is going and who’s making it go there before choosing between upload and download. Before you know it, people will start asking you for help debugging their IPv6 firewall rules and recompiling their embedded Linux kernels.⁴

That’s right, Fox News: read up and find out how real live internet users talk about it. [↩]
The type of report is irrelevant to these examples. [↩]
Unless, of course, Bob or Alice were downloading something illegal with BitTorrent or other peer-to-peer software, in which case they would say something like: d00d eye m d0wnlo4d1n9 t|-|is t0rr3nt @ th3 k-rad sp33d of 7.3KB/s!!!1!!1! [↩]
Don’t actually help them do these things, though. You might break something. [↩]

Kill the cliché

Killthecliché.com raises new and troubling questions about perverse and often baffling word choices in the press.

Word of the day: etag

etag, N. the electronic-mail version of telephone-tag.

Word of the day: Goricle

Goricle, N (def). Former Vice President and the 42nd elected president of the United States of America Al Gore. As in:

In recent weeks there have been encouraging signs that the Goricle’s message is getting through.

Revolutionary and wrong

What Larry Wall is doing (or has been doing, for the last seven years) with Perl 6 is revolutionary:

There needs to be a universal root language, and ways of warping that universal root language into whatever dialect you like.

It’s incredibly valuable to examine all the ways in which a (programming or natural) language can vary. I’m sure they’re learning a lot that will be useful to language designers everywhere. Perl 6 will undoubtedly be a great tool for quickly prototyping new languages, too.

It’s also wrong for a production language. The last thing I want in a programming language is diversely variable and configurable syntax and semantics. Sitting down to maintain or debug someone else’s Perl 6 sounds like a nightmare. Not only would you have to figure out what they are trying to say, you’d have to figure out what dialect of Perl 6 they were using, and exactly how that dialect works.

For this reason I’d tend to avoid Perl 6 for new projects, nor would I want to join a Perl 6 project mid-stream. If I had to work in Perl 6, the first thing I’d do would be to convince the entire team to stick to the standard dialect (or maybe some other, popular dialect) and never re-configure it.

I doubt we’ll see much traction for Perl 6 outside of research settings. The benefit of picking PHP and Java over Python or Ruby is that it’s easier to find PHP and Java programmers, than it is to find programmers for even the relatively popular Python or Ruby. Trying to find a programmer who knows not just Perl but Perl 6 and your dialect of Perl 6 is going to be even harder.

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