Subject: Re: Beginner question: performance problems with a simple program From: Erik Naggum <erik@naggum.net> Date: Wed, 02 Jan 2002 00:59:11 GMT Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp Message-ID: <3218921950422847@naggum.net> * Thomas F. Burdick | Certainly the idea of locales can be (and is) taken to a silly extreme. | However, there are a few languages that are really important, and being | able to deliver applications in them is important. English, Spanish, | maybe French, Arabic, Chinese, and Japanese, should all be usable. We | should be able to assume that all programmers have at least basic English | skills, but the same is not true of users. Well, you cannot write a program that works in English, Spanish, French, Arabic, Chinese and Japanese unless you know _all_ these languages and _prepare_ for the translation. The only way to make a program work in more than one language is to make it work in _none_: formalize a protocol and write user-interface front- ends to it. Let those who understand the application _and_ the target language write that user-interface front-end. English happens to be the _common_ language of the field of computer science. It no longer has the role of a natural language in computer science. That this leaves a large number of people "handicapped" by being misled to believe that _their_ language is the common language, is nothing but unfortunate. Forget the whole locale business and write software that speaks about objects and units and internal stuff, and let several user-interface guys handle the user-interface portion that talks to people in various cultures. This is not hard at all, once you get past the misguided notion that all computer programs should talk directly to users. /// --