How a language reflects its people

> The limits of my language mean the limits of my world.
– Wittgenstein

Transcript

1. “ Die Grenzen meiner Sprache bedeuten die Grenzen meiner Welt. – Wittgenstein
2. “ The limits of my language mean the limits of my world. – Wittgenstein
3. HOW A LANGUAGE REFLECTS ITS PEOPLE Alex Coles | RubyConf Australia 2017
4. WHY RUBY?
5. WE LIKE RUBY
6. WE ❤ RUBY
7. HUMAN
8. Language People World
10. Language People World Computing
11. PEOPLE TO LANGUAGE LANGUAGE TO PEOPLE LANGUAGE TO LANGUAGE PEOPLE TO COMPUTING COMPUTING TO PEOPLE PEOPLE TO COMPUTING TO PEOPLE
12. G’DAY MELBOURNE
13. ABOUT ME
14. @MYABC Alex Coles Oxford, England
15. EURUCAMP.ORG JRUBYCONF.EU
16. TRAILBLAZER.IO
17. HIRE ME
18. PEOPLE TO LANGUAGE
19. LANGUAGES ➤ Natural - e.g. English, Spanish ➤ Constructed - e.g. Esperanto ➤ Formal - e.g. Algebra, JavaScript
20. NATURAL
21. HISTORY
24. POLITICS AND COMMERCE
25. POST-TRUTH BREXIT FLAT WHITE
26. REFORM AND PLANNING
27. תירבע
29. KAURNA
32. INDIVIDUALS
33. THE BARD Creator of many words
34. MATZ Creator of Ruby
35. COMMUNITY
36. LANGUAGE TO PEOPLE
37. SHADES OF GREY
40. WELTANSCHAUUNG
41. Edward Sapir | Benjamin Lee Whorf
42. LANGUAGE AFFECTS WORLD VIEW
43. LANGUAGE DETERMINES WORLD VIEW
44. Wilhelm von Humboldt
45. RUBY SYNTAX
46. RSpec.describe 'my Ruby code' do it_behaves_like 'the English language' end RSpec.describe Boomerang do subject(:boomerang) { Boomerang.new } it_behaves_like 'a hunting tool' it_behaves_like 'a percussion instrument' it 'is designed to be thrown' do expect(boomerang).to be_throwable end end
47. PUNCTUATION
48. WHAT THERE IS ➤ ? question mark ➤ ! bang (exclamation mark)
49. WHAT THERE ISN’T ➤ ; semi-colons ➤ () parentheses (sometimes) ➤ {} braces (sometimes)
50. UNICODE
53. LTR VS RTL
55. WORD ORDER
56. SUBJECT VERB OBJECT
57. ➤ The man eats fish ➤ L'homme mange le poisson ➤ a = 2 ➤ a = 2 + 2 SUBJECT VERB ORDER
58. VERB SUBJECT OBJECT
59. LOGIC AND ARITHMETIC NOTATION prefix + 2 2 “Polish” infix 2 + 2 postfix 2 2 + “Reverse Polish”
60. ➤ (def x 5) ➤ (+ 2 4)
61. OPERATORS
62. Logical Operators ➤ and ➤ or ➤ not Special Operators ➤ defined?
63. LANGUAGE TO LANGUAGE
64. LANGUAGES IN THE FIFTIES ➤ Short Code ➤ Autocode ➤ FORTRAN ➤ FLOW-MATIC
65. LANGUAGES IN THE SIXTIES ➤ ALGOL ➤ LISP ➤ C
66. RUBY PRIOR ART ➤ Perl ➤ Smalltalk ➤ Eiffel ➤ Ada ➤ LISP
67. PEOPLE TO COMPUTING
68. LOW-LEVEL LANGUAGES ➤ Machine Code ➤ Assembly
70. NO CONCEPTS
71. SIGNALS AND NEURONS
72. HIGHER
73. COMPUTING TO PEOPLE
74. TECHNOLOGY
75. PERSIST
76. AI
77. HUMAN EFFECT
78. …
79. PEOPLE TO COMPUTING TO PEOPLE
80. SOFTWARE =
 CODE + DOCUMENTATION
81. SELF-DOCUMENTING CODE
82. CONCLUSION
83. WHY RUBY?
84. MINSWAN
85. THANK YOU
86. @MYABC