Re: PEP 3131: Supporting Non-ASCII Identifiers

Duncan Booth wrote:

Recently there has been quite a bit of publicity about the One Laptop Per Child project. The XO laptop is just beginning rollout to children and provides two main programming environments: Squeak and Python. It is an exciting thought that that soon there will be millions of children in countries such as Nigeria, Brazil, Uruguay or Nepal[*] who have the potential to learn to program, but tragic if the Python community is too arrogant to consider it acceptable to use anything but English and ASCII.

Please don't be too quick with assuming arrogance. I have studied social psychology for eleven years and my thesis was just about such a subject. I even held a degree in social psychology for some time before my government in their infinite wisdom decided to 'upgrade' the system so that only people holding *working* positions at a university would be able to convert their degrees to the new system. I suspect discerning people can still sense a twinge of disagreement with that in my professional attitude. However I still think the results of my research were valid.

The idea was to try and measure whether it would be better for foreign students visiting the Netherlands to be kept in their own separate groups being able to speak their native language and to hold on to their own culture versus directly integrating them with the main culture by mixing them up with Dutch student groups (in this case the main culture was Dutch).

I think I my research data supported the idea that it is best even for the foreigners themselves to adapt as quickly as possible to the main culture and start to interact with it by socializing with 'main culture' persons.

My research at that time didn't fit in at all with the political climate of the time and subsequently it was impossible for me to find a job. That didn't mean that I forgot about it. I think a lot of the same ideas would help the OLPC project so that they will not make the same mistake of creating separate student populations.

I believe -but that is a personal belief which I haven't been able to prove yet by doing research- that those people currently holding positions of power in the main culture actively *prevent* new groups to integrate because it would threaten their positions of power.

So instead of having a favorable view of teachers who are 'adapting' to their students culture I have in fact quite the opposite view: Those teachers are actually harming the future prospects of their students. I'm not sure either whether they do it because they're trying to protect their own positions or are merely complicit to higher up political forces.

Whatever you make of my position I would appreciate if you'd not directly conclude that I'm just being arrogant or haven't thought about the matter if I am of a different opinion than you.

Yes, any sensible widespread project is going to mandate a particular language for variable names and comments, but I see no reason at all why they all have to use English.

Well I clearly do see a reason why it would be in their very best interest to immediately start to use English and to interact with the main Python community.

[*] BTW, I see OLPC Nepal is looking for volunteer Python programmers this Summer: if anyone fancies spending 6+ weeks in Nepal this Summer for no pay, see http://www.mail-archive.com/devel@xxxxxxxxxx/msg04109.html

Thanks. I'll think about it. The main problem I see for my participation is that I have absolutely *no* personal funds to contribute to this project, not even to pay for my trip to that country or to pay my rent while I'm abroad.

A.
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