The language of science has shifted before; I don't think it's reasonable to assume it won't again.
Then again, English might stay around as a, well, legacy language. I could imagine someone a few hundred years from now studying archaic english, in preparation for a dive into the kernel or whatever. Then again, computer translation will probably have gotten good enough that it won't be necessary.
The language of science has shifted before; I don't think it's reasonable to assume it won't again.
The language of diplomacy used to be french. Some of the cultural remnants of this still remain today, even though the role that french used to play is now played by english. If it were to happen how long would it take for english to lose favor as a language of computers?
I have tried to explain to my non-technical friends how strange it is that computer programming language == english proficiency (usually) - because it seems like the large majority of discussion around programming and computers happens in english (open source communities, bug reports, documentation) - I wonder how that will work as the field of computers matures into it's 1st and 2nd centuries- how much and to what level will programming and programming languages fragment? What kinds of things will remain in english/latin and what will transition- what kinds of programming related things will only be in chinese or devanagari (india) script?
Even the act of typing is predicated to the idea of a latin alphabet, I wonder to what degree the languages will continue to change to adapt to that and to what degree the technology will adapt to compensate for the language.
Once you start thinking (as a native english speaker) how much of the world of computers is naturally biased towards latin/english it kind of blows your mind.
Thing is, switching the "world language" becomes a more expensive endeavor as more content exists in it, and more speakers understand it. Last time that happened - when French was replaced by English - the numbers were very different. Sure, many educated people spoke French, but nowhere near as many as there are English speakers today, even in proportion to world's population. And it was not nearly as dominant for content: science was mostly done in national languages, and so were books.
Two things changed the landscape a lot. First, universal school education, which in most countries includes at least some rudimentary English, vastly expanded the number of people proficient with it to some extent. And second, the amount of cultural and scientific interchange has skyrocketed, with both effectively standardizing on English as the common language.
So, short of some kind of near-extinction event that would unwind our progress a couple hundred years back, I don't see a high likelihood for change. It seems that we're in the beginning of the "common language" era, and English - or whatever it evolves into over time, anyway - is going to be that language.
Honestly, I doubt that it will, barring some civilization-scale catastrophe that resets global progress. I'm not being hyperbolic. As the world has shrunk, and intercommunication has increased, the benefits of being able to access the dominant languages have increased dramatically, and part of that process is fixing what is dominant.
English already has the unique distinction of having more ESL speakers than native ones, and has become the lingua franca of world commerce.
(And let's pause for a minute to enjoy the incorporation of the phrase 'lingua franca' in to the English corpus, too. I do love how English is completely shameless about taking whatever it wants from other languages to add to itself.)
>(And let's pause for a minute to enjoy the incorporation of the phrase 'lingua franca' in to the English corpus, too. I do love how English is completely shameless about taking whatever it wants from other languages to add to itself.)
The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and riffle their pockets for new vocabulary.
I mean, bombing Syria does seem farther away, in the geographical (and therefore emotional) sense.
Plus, the United States is sickeningly nationalistic, and still carries a hint of pride about its immigrant origins. "This child wanted to come into the U.S., but the cruel President Trump won't let him!" packs more punch than "President Obama issued a drone strike against one side of a multifaceted conflict in a small country you know nothing about."
There's also the fact that Obama was on the team that typically opposes military intervention and racism (at least ideologically...), and it's harder to get people outraged at their own side. The Republicans might have had trouble riling up their base with drone strikes on muslims, so they went for other hot buttons. The Democrats, on the other hand, are perfectly happy to sink their teeth into the travel ban.
At least you recognize that this is political posturing and virtue signaling and not an actual principled stand in favor of people from other countries.
I'm one step more cynical than that. I think this is the butt-hurt media riling people up because their darling lost the election. Oh, and of course ratings. When the news broke via wikileaks that the CIA, under Obama, started the Syrian civil war which as led to half a million deaths it was barely a blip on the radar because the media liked the guy who did it.
The syrian civil war started 2.5 years before US involvement.
And just so I understand you correctly.. you're saying the green card holders and other visa holders who had their lives disrupted by this order, the judges who ruled that the order is likely illegal, the 97 tech companies in this article whos lawyers think this is illegal, Sally Yates, ACLU, Cato institute, state AGs in CA, WA, CT, HI, IL, IA, ME, MD, NM, NY, OR, PA, VT, VA, and DC...
are all acting entirely politically.
You're even accusing the judicial branch, including judge(s?) appointed by republicans, of ruling against this order because the dems lost an election?
The Syrian civil war is at least in part THE RESULT of US involvement.
I'm not saying the green card holders are acting politically. I'm saying the thousands of people protesting are expressing partisan bullshit selective outrage.
Obama bombed Syria so much we literally ran out of bombs. I'm going to repeat that again for effect. The United States of Bomb-merica bombed Syria so much we ran out of bombs. We're making cluster bombs and selling them to be dropped on these places, weapons which the use of is a war crime in most of the world. For years there's not been an peep out of these people. Now suddenly some people can't travel where they wanted to and it's like the next rise of Hitler. Gimme a break, there's half a million dead on Obama's hands and nobody gave a shit.
The EO was a pretty shit idea. I don't support it and I don't support Trump. If the Judicial is able to clear it up, then that's great. The group(s) I was referring to with the political posturing are the media with frankly disgusting coverage intended to inflame an already delicate situation, and the protesters who are largely their pawns.
I was ready to give you an upvote for the link, but your link doesnt support the claim ("US sent the CIA into Syria in 2006") you're making.
In fact, if you read the actual document from Wikileaks, the funding seems to consist of funds for informational campaigns, conferences, etc -- all talk. A lot of it entirely outside of Syria. And the amount is fairly small as well - $6m over 4 years. No military/cia operations, nothing about rebels, etc are found in the document.
To get back to the topic though.. I would suggest that if the issue is legitimate, then the protest is also legitimate.
No, it is not sufficient to make a policy decision, for instance. But if I have to go and vote on this issue, it is at least something I could base my judgment on.
It's generally custom, although we've had teams use ML strategies to tune their bots in the past. (I'm one of the people who runs this competition).
We impose tight runtime limits on the code your AI can run - generally limiting the number of bytecodes the JVM can execute per turn per robot. This is partly pedagogical; it kinda-sorta simulates embedded programming, like for a real robot. It's also practical; it keeps people from accidentally DOS'ing themselves or our servers with infinitely-looping AI.
On the other hand, 20000 instructions per turn doesn't give you much leeway for, say, matrix multiplication, so most sophisticated ML isn't possible at runtime. You can do simple things, but they have to be tightly written.
Other JVM languages are technically allowed, but AFAIK they generate way too much scaffolding & reflection-based flow such that you end up burning your entire bytecode computation budget just in calling one or two functions.
So yes, you could probably use Jython or Jruby, but you wouldn't be competitive against the people writing straight Java.
Then again, English might stay around as a, well, legacy language. I could imagine someone a few hundred years from now studying archaic english, in preparation for a dive into the kernel or whatever. Then again, computer translation will probably have gotten good enough that it won't be necessary.