[HN Gopher] Cree#, a morphemic programming language with Cree ke... ___________________________________________________________________ Cree#, a morphemic programming language with Cree keywords and concepts Author : relatt Score : 51 points Date : 2021-04-11 16:13 UTC (6 hours ago) (HTM) web link (esoteric.codes) (TXT) w3m dump (esoteric.codes) | smitty1e wrote: | > Jon Corbett | | Not to be confused with Jonathan Corbet of LWN. | saltyfamiliar wrote: | This feels vaguely racist. It's one thing to make a programming | language that uses Cree keywords, but to include smoke signals, | call loops "winters" and make it all about "storytelling" just | seems so patronizing. | dang wrote: | Please don't take HN threads into flamewar. | | https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html | sterlind wrote: | The creator is Cree himself [0]. | | I think the storytelling aspect is what he's going for, not | just to make C# but with Cree keywords. Baskets are weaved | differently in different cultures. Is it possible to have a | programming language that reflects a different culture or | outlook? What would that look like? It's an experiment. | | 0. http://joncorbett.ca/default.html | Mountain_Skies wrote: | Don't let past misuses of Cree culture by outsiders restrict | their ability to use those paradigms as they see fit. Just | because someone in Hollywood thought that smoke signals made a | good trope for any movie involving first nations doesn't mean | that smoke signals are inherently racist or offensive when used | in an appropriate context. | horsawlarway wrote: | I read the whole interview, and at no point did I really feel | like I understood what this is trying to achieve. The closest I | felt I got was this: | | --- > Obviously my primary target communities here are Cree | communities that are looking for new (and exciting) ways to | encourage students (especially in the K-12 grades) to use their | heritage language as much as possible, and resist using English | as their primary language. --- | | But at the end of the day - This feels more like a display piece | along the lines of art. Choices were personal, artistic, and | spiritual. But I _REALLY_ struggle to call this a programming | language. To quote him: | | --- > Where the output is generative and graphic. The generative | aspect is crucial in the representation of the Indigenous | worldview, because when the program ends whatever display was | generated is destroyed (comes to end of life). And subsequent | running of the program - though they may produce similar results | will never be graphically identical to any previous execution. | This mimics the "real" world equivalent of listening to a story | from a storyteller - who might change it slightly each time, so | the same story is never the same twice. --- | | I'd say instead this feels more like NetLogo - It's a modeling | environment that creates generative graphical output based on | input, but is not capable of doing most of the things that I'd | expect from any real programming language. Mainly - repeatability | and precision. | | Doesn't make it a bad choice, particularly if his goal is student | engagement - but it's not a tool that I feel has much use outside | of the very limited environment of teaching/story telling. | relatt wrote: | Yes I think it's both those things, and really a few different | projects with overlapping goals: | | Cree# itself as a general-purpose language based on C#/Java | with Cree keywords | | Ancestral Codes and wisakecak as multimedia versions of the | language, what he calls the "digital storytelling apparatus." | Here he's bringing in cultural logic from Cree, with programs | as stories written to the Raven, as interpreter of the code, | used to record and present stories from Cree elders, etc | | And then the Indigenous Toolkit to help other communities build | programming languages around their own traditions | jdc wrote: | > Doesn't make it a bad choice, particularly if his goal is | student engagement - but it's not a tool that I feel has much | use outside of the very limited environment of teaching/story | telling. | | And that's enough. | ModernMech wrote: | I encourage you to watch this talk by Amy J. Ko called A Human | View of Programming she gave at SPLASHCon a couple years ago | [0]. It makes that case that the predominant view of | programming languages as math or tools is not the only valid | view, and that by holding this narrow definition for | programming languages, the PL community has left a huge design | space untapped. | | I think it's fine for you to expect repeatability and precision | from the languages you use if you are using them as tools. But | not everyone uses programming languages that way, so I don't | think a PL that is not repeatable and precise is any less of a | programming language. It may not be a good tool, but as the | talk argues, that's okay, as this is only one a narrow view of | programming languages. | | https://medium.com/bits-and-behavior/my-splash-2016-keynote-... | api wrote: | I can imagine another timeline where the settlement of the | Americas was more a blending than a displacement and there exist | things like Cherokee and Navajo keyboards. | philwelch wrote: | The cultural devastation wrought on the indigenous peoples of | the Americas was tragic. But it was also largely inevitable. | The colonization of Africa left many more Africans alive than | the colonization of America because America was biologically | isolated from Eurasia while Africa was not. The epidemics, | particularly of smallpox, that depopulated the Americas were so | brutal largely because the indigenous Americans had neither the | biological nor the cultural adaptation to infectious disease | that was common among Eurasians and Africans. Most indigenous | causes of illness in the Americas were due to parasites rather | than viruses and bacteria, allowing the evolution of cultural | practices like having the entire extended family of a sick | person keep them company and try and comfort them through their | illness. | | One consequence of this is that the indigenous cultures that | we've actually had the chance to study don't really represent | the pre-Colombian cultures that well, because by then, there | was already substantial disruption from the infectious diseases | and wildlife that spread throughout the continent well in | advance of explorers and colonists. | AlotOfReading wrote: | This narrative gets trotted out anytime this subject comes | up. It's not reflective of the actual literature. Here's an | older perspective from 2009 [1]: | | > the available evidence clearly indicates that the | demographic collapse was not uniform in either timing or | magnitude and may have been caused by factors other than | epidemic disease. ... Despite the trauma of conquest, Native | Americans continued to have their own histories, intertwined | with but not entirely determined by Europeans and their | pathogens. | | Since that was written, the evidence has swung even more | strongly towards the idea that disease was intimately | associated with the close, persistent contacts needed for the | "conquest" and missionary activities of colonial powers. | | Not to mention, similar epidemics were observed among | indigenous southern africans and siberians during their | respective colonizations. The Americas were unique in the | scale and completeness of their disruption, but not in the | mechanisms. | | [1] https://doi.org/10.1007/s10814-009-9036-8 | jariel wrote: | This is a wayward argument. | | You're arguing from the quote that 'it's other than | disease' and then two sentences later that it was, but due | to 'persistent contact needed for conquest'. | | None of this adds up to a coherent argument. | | If Aboriginals weren't dying en mass from disease, then | what from? Because we have crude records of interaction. | There were very few violent fights between Aboriginals and | newcomers in Canada, for example. | | And where is the evidence that Colonialists had | 'consistent, closer contact' in hew New World, than in | Africa? | | I'm all for more nuanced history, we're learning stuff | every day, but I think a lot of it is also speculative, and | ideologically driven. | Grieving wrote: | I agree largely with your response, but | | > And where is the evidence that Colonialists had | 'consistent, closer contact' in hew New World, than in | Africa? | | In Africa, Europeans died off rapidly due to local | diseases. Consequently, the early slave trade was | centered in the islands off of Africa itself, and | mediated by a mulatto class who were less susceptible. | jariel wrote: | Aboriginals had no writing system so there would be no | keyboards. | | That should be a signal as to how 'far apart' colonialists and | aboriginals were with respect to development of cultural | institutions. | | The writing you see in this post is invented by a Canadian- | English Methodist Priest in the mid 10th (Edit: 19th century | obviously!) century for the benefit of the aboriginals. The | system, in current terms is itself 'firmly colonialist' (I'm | sure someone will cynically characterize it as a form of | oppression). | | That said, it'd be cool to see Cree keyboards. | | In fact, making a 'Cree Keyboard' might have been a much more | practical use of the authors time, and might have actually more | materially affected young people's ability to learn Cree. | | Come to think of it, there really should be such keyboards | available ... | quiescant_dodo wrote: | > Aboriginals had no writing system so there would be no | keyboards. | | The Maya and Aztec had writing in the form of hieroglypics. | The Inca had persistent communication via Quipu's rope knots. | | (I learned this from _Guns, Germs, and Steel_ which is a | phenomenal book. I haven't done other research, though, so | maybe the book isn't a good source.) | Grieving wrote: | I assume the person you're responding to is talking more | about the aboriginal peoples of the United States. | | GG&S is an interesting book, but extremely conjectural and | ideological, and not well-sourced. Some of the evidence is | distorted. Off the top of my head, he reproduces a table of | grain yields, and when tracking down his sources for this, | it turns out that he's omitted results that contradict his | theory. The reasoning is sometimes shaky or circular: 'Why | do we know X wasn't domesticable? Because it wasn't | domesticated.' Etc. etc. I don't find his theory holds up | particularly well. | jcranmer wrote: | Charles Mann's 1492 is a better book than Guns, Germs, and | Steel for anything pre-Columbian Americas. | | The Mayans had a complete, complex logosyllabic writing | system. (I believe the syllabic components are more common | than logographic components, but I'm not certain). | Individual syllables (or logograms) could be combined into | a single glyph block in a variety of ways. This writing | system, I believe, is connected to Zapotec and epi-Olmec | writing systems, but disentangling who created what and who | borrowed from whom in Mesoamerica is challenging. | | The Aztecs had what appears to be a proto-writing system, | largely capable of only recording proper nouns | (predominantly place names); most of the writing would | instead be conveyed pictographically. Before the Aztecs, in | Classical Mesoamerica, Teotihuacan (which was the major | power in the Central Mexico Valley at that time period) | appears to have never used any form of writing, despite | having conquered Classic Maya city-states which were in | full florescence of their writing systems. | | Quipus originate at least as early as the Wari culture in | the Andes, although (again) people only recognize the final | Andean civilization, the Inca. Whether or not they are a | writing system is debatable--it's known they encode more | than just numeric values (such as place names), but whether | they can convey enough information to be considered writing | is unknown. | | Post-contact, Sequoya developed a syllabary for the | Cherokee language based only on the knowledge of the | existence of the Latin alphabet (he couldn't read English | or any European language, but he did have access to | European-language materials--that's why several Cherokee | letterforms look like Latin ones but have _completely_ | different meanings). Missionaries in Canada developed a | syllabary for several aboriginal languages that remains in | use by many Cree, Ojibwe, and Inuktitut speakers. | grzm wrote: | Thanks for the reference. Sounds like an interesting | book! I see Charles Mann has a couple of books. Have you | read _1493_ also? | | - _1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus_ | https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/39020.1491 | | - _1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created_ | https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/9862761-1493 | jcranmer wrote: | It's on my to-read list, but I haven't made time for it | yet. | nerdponx wrote: | Or, more plausibly, these societies without writing systems | might have developed their own writing systems eventually. | | Your post could be applied to the Vietnamese writing system, | for example. Or to the many other languages that have adopted | variants of the Arabic, Cyrillic, and Latin writing systems. | | No society is frozen in time. | jariel wrote: | That they 'would have, maybe in 1000 years developed a | writing system' is definitely true, but the fact is at | contact they did not, and even after 100's of years of | trade and interaction and availability of Western | literature - they still did not, and so that they did not | is a meaningful measure of cultural evolution. | | It's hard to do most advanced things without writing if you | only have oral, just like it's hard to do some things | without Iron if you only have Bronze. | jcranmer wrote: | > Aboriginals had no writing system so there would be no | keyboards. | | Mesoamerica had at least one family of complete writing | systems (I'll call this Maya, although whether or not they | invented it or adapted it from others is debated), and | another proto-writing system that may well evolved into a | full writing system (the Aztecs, who at the time of contact | appear to have been in the early stages of planning a | conquest of the Maya). Andean cultures had a maybe-it's-a- | writing-system-unlike-any-other, the quipus. | | Of course, positing a less domineering conquest, it is very | likely that cultures may well have developed their own | indigenous writing systems via contact with Europeans--that | is _precisely_ what the Cherokee did. I doubt they would have | stubbornly refused to pick up any writing systems. | | > That should be a signal as to how 'far apart' colonialists | and aboriginals were with respect to development of cultural | institutions. | | Yeah, Tenochtitlan had public zoos and museums, organized | anthropology, universal primary education, ethnic quarters, | professional sports leagues at a time when all of those | concepts would take another few centuries to be 'invented' in | Europe. | | Oh, wait, were you suggesting that it was _the Americas_ that | was culturally backward? | | > The writing you see in this post is invented by a Canadian- | English Methodist Priest in the mid 10th century for the | benefit of the aboriginals. The system, in current terms is | itself 'firmly colonialist' (I'm sure someone will cynically | characterize it as a form of oppression). | | My understanding is that the modern indigenous groups see the | use of the syllabics as less oppressive than being forced to | use Latin, as the syllabics are designed to more closely | match the language than using the Latin script. | craigbaker wrote: | Both keyboards do exist. The Cherokee layout is included in OSX | and iOS, while Navajo is available for download. You can find | pictures of Cherokee keycaps in use, and I think there were | also typewriters and certainly printed type in Cherokee. | Grieving wrote: | That blending largely occurred in Latin America, but languages | rarely survive such things both in the Americas and generally | throughout history. Communication is important enough that the | language of whichever group is technologically superior becomes | the lingua franca, and the other slowly disappears. | samatman wrote: | That undersells the situation in Latin America, to put it | mildly. There are almost two million native speakers of | Nahuatl languages in Mexico, six million Maya speakers in | Central America, 25% of Peru speaks Quechua at home (around | ten million in total throughout the Andes). Guarani has | official status in Paraguay, half of the population is | monolingual in it, substantial numbers of people of partial | or complete European ancestry speak it every day, we're | talking about 6.5 million people. | | As a point of comparison, there are 2.9 million registered | Native Americans, and 5.2 million people who check that box, | sometimes along with others, on the latest census. | Mountain_Skies wrote: | That the keywords and symbols are Cree is trivial and not that | much different than when someone does the same thing with Klingon | or Swedish Chef but the concept of a programming language based | on storytelling is interesting. It might never end up being a | useful language for information infrastructure or corporate | problem solving but I suspect that if it gains much traction with | Cree students (or anyone with an interest) that they'll end up | coming up with uses that we haven't thought of before with our | programming languages tied so deeply to our cultural norms. | na85 wrote: | >with our programming languages tied so deeply to our cultural | norms. | | In what way do you perceive mainstream programming languages to | be tied to cultural norms? | thechao wrote: | A colleague is French-Canadian; I suggested localizing C to | French; he proposed: le if (...) { } | c'est la vie { } | nerdponx wrote: | Is it? The language appears to (at least somewhat) make use of | syntax that is inspired by the specific way the Cree language | works. | chickenmonkey wrote: | I see this as an attempt to implement a programming paradigm (i.e | storytelling) that's radically different from existing paradigms. | How are others interpreting this project? What's it's | significance? ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2021-04-11 23:00 UTC)