Meet قلب, the programming language that uses Arabic script
Programmers often talk about writing "beautiful code," but computer scientist Ramsey Nasser has taken that idea to new lengths by developing the first programming language that uses Arabic script for its source code. The language is called قلب – roughly pronounced "alb," after the Arabic word for "heart" – and as Nasser …
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Re: Come back APL
There are three things a man must do before his life is done.
Write two lines in APL - and make the buggers run.
(anyone else remember Stan Kelly-Bootle's "Devil's DP Dictionary"?)
The point of this is?
Beautify coding, god it is tedious enough without adding chintz to the page. It's just a translation after all.
Greppy Python's "The Search For the Holy Code"
god it is tedious enough without adding chintz to the page
"Go back to web development, which will forever stay your lot, peasant!!"
(Rides away, in search of Penrose Tilings)
Re: Come back APL
APL a language was, with syntax worse than JOSS
And everywhere that language went, it caused financial loss.
(the use of APL was blamed, in part, for 1980s hedge fund failures, because its use of matrices in the restricted memory of the day meant that people simply didn't sum enough of the outlying cases and so failed to estimate correctly the probability of loss - or so the books, including the one by Bookstaber, tell me)
Re: The point of this is?
"It's just a translation after all."
Thank you. You saved me the effort of typing in those exact words.
{checks calendar, discovers it's 2013} I would have thought that development environments would have had language switches by now. Being so perfectly trivial and obvious. Every time I scratch the surface I discover yet again how primitive you humans really are. I think you need more than seven billion just to finish up the obvious loose ends.
Will someone translate (port) this new language to English script? It might take a day or two.
Re: The point of this is?
No actually - this is called genius become mentally ill and knows to much but cannot function.
Assemble 100 different written languages, from every century, going back 1000 years. Substitute ONE letter from the english code, with one letter from one of the languages, and go back to the previous centuries set, and get one letter from the second language, and so on, and then repeat back the cycle through the centuries and languages, and when get to the first million characters of your code., tell me what the 497,227th letter stands for.
Idiot comment - but I would like to have an enormous capacity far beyond the human capacity.
I'd also like a 50,000 year life span too...
but...
Re: Come back APL
> the use of APL was blamed, in part, for 1980s hedge fund failures
1) Build rickety financial shite that you only pretend to understand (because "PhD in maths", natch)
2) Crash like the fat-arsed pretentious prick that you are, taking people's pension schemes with you
3) ???
4) "It was the programming language! Honestly!"
Re: Come back APL
"1) Build rickety financial shite that you only pretend to understand (because "PhD in maths", natch)
2) Crash like the fat-arsed pretentious prick that you are, taking people's pension schemes with you
3) ???
4) "It was the programming language! Honestly!""
This does sound like it meets Occams razor quite well.
@ribosome
"(the use of APL was blamed, in part, for 1980s hedge fund failures, because its use of matrices in the restricted memory of the day meant that people simply didn't sum enough of the outlying cases and so failed to estimate correctly the probability of loss - or so the books, including the one by Bookstaber, tell me)"
Note that is down to the implementation not the language itself.
A criticism that could be leveled at any language used in this application. APL, due to its terseness might have been more memory efficient, so allowing larger ranges to be considered.
Not an APL fanbois, just looking to see fairness. I still think that a bunch of coked up ar**heads making the decisions seems more plausible than a poor language implementation, but that's just me.
Re: @ribosome
No, according to Bookstaber the problem was in between implementation and design.
The issue was that at the time APL was an interpreted language. As a result, it was efficient if one if its terse constructs was able to manipulate a lot of data in one hit, but not if loops were needed. This meant that it slowed down dramatically if a range of values had to be calculated that required more than the available memory space.
I am prepared to concede that hedge fund traders, despite their PhDs in maths, failed to realise that they shouldn't have been doing it that way.But 6/6 hindsight is given to all of us.
Next stop: A language based on either Elvish or Klingon
And the world will STILL yawn.
Coat, please...
Re: Next stop: A language based on either Elvish or Klingon
Why next?KLingon programming already exists.
* Specifications are for the weak and timid!!
* This machine is a piece of GAGH! I need dual Pentium processors if I am to do battle with this code.
* You cannot really apprecaite Dilbert unless you've read it in the original Klingon.
* Indentation?! I will show you how to indent when I indent your skull!
* What is this talk of 'release'? Klingons do not make software 'releases'. Our software escapes, leaving a bloody trail of designers and quality assurance people in its wake!
* Klingon function calls do not have "parameters" - they have "arguments"- and they ALWAYS WIN THEM.
* Debugging? Klingons do not debug. Our software does not coddle the weak.
* I have challenged the entire Quality Assurance team to a Bat-Leh contest! They will not concern us again.
* A TRUE Klingon warrior does not comment his code.
* By filing this bug report you have challenged the honor of my family. Prepare to die!
* You question the worthiness of my code? I should kill you where you stand!
* Our users will know fear and cower before our software! Ship it! Ship it and let them flee like the dogs they are!
Re: Re: Next stop: A language based on either Elvish or Klingon
".....* A TRUE Klingon warrior does not comment his code......" I have definitely previously worked with undercover Klingon programmers!
Re: Next stop: A language based on either Elvish or Klingon
Elvish? Klingon? Old hat. Go look up FiM++ if you want real crazy.
Also, I feel I should long point that Arabic odds disconnect from OPs complained-about languages in that it is not constructed, but add-on actual, living tongue.
Re: Next stop: A language based on either Elvish or Klingon
I now understand ("Specifications are for the weak and timid") that I have indeed worked in the past for Klingons.
Re: Next stop: A language based on either Elvish or Klingon
Once in a while there is a Post on these forums that makes this site worth the trouble, you sir are a genius, stand up and take a bow , You have won at life :)
Re: Next stop: A language based on either Elvish or Klingon
"Why next?KLingon programming already exists."
There is a truly terrible simplicity about this concept.
The more wrong it seems the more right you know it is.
Re: Next stop: A language based on either Elvish or Klingon
"Why next?KLingon programming already exists.
* Specifications are for the weak and timid!!
* This machine is a piece of GAGH! I need dual Pentium processors if I am to do battle with this code.
* You cannot really apprecaite Dilbert unless you've read it in the original Klingon.
* Indentation?! I will show you how to indent when I indent your skull!
* What is this talk of 'release'? Klingons do not make software 'releases'. Our software escapes, leaving a bloody trail of designers and quality assurance people in its wake!
* Klingon function calls do not have "parameters" - they have "arguments"- and they ALWAYS WIN THEM.
* Debugging? Klingons do not debug. Our software does not coddle the weak.
* I have challenged the entire Quality Assurance team to a Bat-Leh contest! They will not concern us again.
* A TRUE Klingon warrior does not comment his code.
* By filing this bug report you have challenged the honor of my family. Prepare to die!
* You question the worthiness of my code? I should kill you where you stand!
* Our users will know fear and cower before our software! Ship it! Ship it and let them flee like the dogs they are!"
Martin?
Re: Next stop: A language based on either Elvish or Klingon
"Elvish? Klingon? Old hat. Go look up FiM++ if you want real crazy"
Na, the cow language is tops (http://www.bigzaphod.org/cow/), check this out.....
generate fibonacci sequence
MoO
moO
MoO
mOo
[[ main loop ]]
MOO
[[ print first number ]]
OOM
[[ temp copy of first number ]]
MMM
moO
moO
MMM
mOo
mOo
[[ store second number off in the first position now ]]
moO
MMM
mOo
MMM
[[ move back to temp number ]]
moO
moO
[[ use temp to add to first and store in second in loop ]]
MOO
MOo
mOo
MoO
moO
moo
mOo
mOo
moo
Re: Next stop: A language based on either Elvish or Klingon
I thought the first 2 words were a new kind of loop
why-next
great idea
Re: Terrorists...
The NSA will go bonkers. Now they need ANOTHER building.
Terrorists?
@AC Do you think the compiled byte code is Arabic too? Dumb ass.
Show some respect, Arabic has given more to computing than most cultures.
Re: Terrorists?
".......Arabic has given more to computing than most cultures." Like what? As has been pointed out, the vast majority of so-called Arab scientific achievements were simply recycled from the Romans, Greeks, Persians, Indians, Chinese, Phoenicians, etc., etc., in fact from just about everyone except Arabs.
"A great way for terrorists to obfuscate their code."
Idiot
Gentlemen,
please check your irony detectors. They seem to be broken seriously.
Don't worry, it'll stop working several times a day so you can go and pray.
historical ignorance
I suggest that you read the excellent book Pathfinders: The Golden Age of Arabic Science by Jim Al-Khalili.
Re: Terrorists?
Steve "Jandali" Jobs.
His biological father was a Syrian teacher.
re: A great way for terrorists to obfuscate their code.
You think the IRA will bother to learn Arabic?
Official suppliers of domestic terrorism to her majesty for more than a century.
Re: re: A great way for terrorists to obfuscate their code.
Well, the IRA might delight in infusing Arabic with Gaelic, Welsh, and limerics.... With mandatory use of the fax tone as punctuation and pause indicators...
Wait... I think the NSA is with Section 31 to arrest me before this post completes...
Re: Terrorists? Arabic? Respect?
Why respect? Many don't respect others.
Still, it will give NSA and GCHQ to figure out. Not as good as a Gerber file with comments redacted.
Not really
at the height of the post 9/11 hysteria, when TPTB were introducing RIPA an PATRIOT, quite a few people pointed out that if the bad guys *really* wanted to communicate in secret, they'd be best faxing each other in Arabic, given the number of people the west has who could actually read it that way.
Re: Terrorists?
ass hat
you could try wiki-ing this sort of thing before making _even_more_ of_a_twat than usual of yourself.
how do you ever expect to learn anything if you know it all to start with?
Re: Not really
There was a similar problem in the 50/60s in the USA. Anybody who could translate secret Russian messages was obviously a commie and so couldn't have clearance to see secret Russian messages.
Even the BBC used to blacklist reporters who spoke Russian/Chinese -as potential security risks. In one famous case, including an historian with a PhD in medieval chinese
Re: Terrorists?
".......Arabic has given more to computing than most cultures." Like what?
Those funny squiggles we use to count things? you know, numbers?
Re: So...
A excerpt from a list of publisher's queries re spelling, and T. E. Lawrence's answers;
Query: "Slip [galley sheet] 20. Nuri, Emir of the Ruwalla, belongs to the 'chief family of the Rualla'. On Slip 23 'Rualla horse', and Slip 38, 'killed one Rueli'. In all later slips 'Rualla'."
Answer: "should have also used Ruwala and Ruala." .
Query: "Slip 47. Jedha, the she-camel, was Jedhah on Slip 40." .
Answer: "she was a splendid beast." .
Query: "Slip 78. Sherif Abd el Mayin of Slip 68 becomes el Main, el Mayein, el Muein, el Mayin, and el Muyein." .
Answer: "Good egg. I call this really ingenious."
Re: So...
For reasons that are too tedious to go into, I once had to assist* in applying for US study visas for 50 members of the Iraqi Navy. Due to there being no proscribed method for translating between Arabic and Latin script it was a rare day when I found they'd written their own names the same way on more than one form, or on occasion the same form.
*When I say assist I pretty much mean do, from their successful travel to and from the USA I can only conclude it doesn't matter if you make up ~75% of the information on the forms.
> are built with commands based on English words, such as "function," "for," "if," "loop," and so on.
If you can't remember a dozen words (or symbols) then you are probably never going to make it as a programmer anyway. Some of us old timers had to learn the hex codes for several different processors.
Learnt hex codes AND entered them into memory using switches on the front panel! Doesn't mean I would return to those dark days, or inflict them on the younglings.
Arrr, when I were a lad we lived in a hole in the road and ate gravel. Cold gravel.
> Doesn't mean I would return to those dark days,
Neither would I, but memory and abstract thought, which includes the ability to assign concepts to symbols, are essential.
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