How a language reflects its people

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

9. None

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

22. None
23. None

24. POLITICS AND COMMERCE

25. POST-TRUTH BREXIT FLAT WHITE

26. REFORM AND PLANNING

27. תירבע

28. None

29. KAURNA

30. None
31. None

32. INDIVIDUALS

33. THE BARD Creator of many words

34. MATZ Creator of Ruby

35. COMMUNITY

36. LANGUAGE TO PEOPLE

37. SHADES OF GREY

38. None
39. None

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

51. None
52. None

53. LTR VS RTL

54. None

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

69. None

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