[Haskell-cafe] ANN: AC-Vector, AC-Colour and AC-EasyRaster-GTK

Wolfgang Jeltsch g9ks157k at acme.softbase.org
Fri Jul 10 04:44:51 EDT 2009


Am Freitag, 10. Juli 2009 05:26 schrieb roconnor at theorem.ca:
> I find it amazing that you independently chose to spell colour with a `u'.
> It makes me feel better about my choice.

I have to admit that it makes me unhappy. :-( 

Why do we use English for identifiers? Because English is the language of 
computer science. What English should we use? It’s tempting to say, we should 
use the original English, which is British English. But we should ask again 
what is the language of computer science. And the language of computer 
science is American English.

To my knowledge, most early developments in computer science had their roots 
in the US. One consequence of this is that reserved words of programming 
languages are typically in American English. PASCAL uses “program”, 
not “programme”, and BASIC uses “COLOR”, not “COLOUR”. So, in my opinion, 
Haskell color packages should use the identifier Color, not Colour. By the 
way, I also write my papers and documentation in American English.

Best wishes,
Wolfgang
(who is neither British nor American)


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