[Edu-sig] Lets work on the adgenda

[Frank Stajano]

At 2000-02-11 11:12 +0100, Dinu C. Gherman wrote:
>- Underlining the fact that CP4E, as Python, is a 'world
>   movement' and not tied to an American or angle-saxon
>   audience like K-12 or the like.
>
>- Based on the previous item, considering other languages
>   than English right from the start.

This is a very good point. In fact, one of the features of APL was the 
heavy-duty use of those weird ideograms (that needed a special keyboard and 
charset, to be sure) instead of keywords taken from English. A bit like 
mathematical symbols, which were their inspiration.

Not that I'm necessarily advocating this for Neopython, but while we're 
still in the brainstorming mood...

In particular English speakers (especially those who can't properly speak 
any other language) should be aware of the shock and barrier that a 
non-English-speaking kid faces when confronted with a piece of script where 
all the control words are incomprehensible gibberish. Then, suddenly, the 
"Python looks just like natural language" argument no longer holds.

  Frank (http://i.am/filologo.disneyano/)  http://www.uk.research.att.com/~fms/