oachim Durchholz wrote:
> 
> Mark Wai wrote:
> > Pre-mature conclusion and always follow the given can only lead to
> > missed opportunities to make this a better world.
> 
> I don't think my conclusions are premature. I have seen several tries at
> this one. Apple Computer translated the keywords of a scripting
> language, as did Microsoft. Both failed miserably; the experiment was
> cancelled almost instantly once it hit the street (i.e. within a year's
> notice).

They failed exactly because they gave up too soon! Back in the
Fortran/Basic/Clipper days there were lots of people here in Brazil
who programmed even though they didn't know much English. That is
no longer possible with VisualBasic, C++/MFC and much less in Squeak.

So programmers aren't very representative of the general populations,
just as this list's audience is obviously composed of only English
speaking people. Given that, it should be no surprise that non-English
scripting languages weren't well received. I hate it when a friend
asks me to see something in his machine and he is running a Portuguese
version of Windows or of the applications. Not that I don't know
Portuguese :-), but I am used to the English versions and trying
to find things in a different version is a major waste of time. So
if you were to ask me, I would say I prefer Win98 in English. If
they were to listen to me they would lose a lot of sales since I
am not representative of most potential customers.

To be a programmer today you have to know English - of course if
you ask those people they won't be interested in a multilingual
version of anything. And if you do introduce the product anyway
(fixing the other problems Joachim Durchholz mentioned) it will
take a long time for people interested in programming but not
doing it due to their lack of English to notice that things have
changed and to take advantage of it.

So being stunned by the initial reaction and giving up in less
than a year doesn't prove at all that the idea has no merit.

-- Jecel