Why Irish as a language of computation?

One of the primary reasons that I became interested using Irish as a language of computation is the sheer structure of the language, and flexibility of the language. Slightly different concepts could be expressed in slightly different ways. During one part of the project researching the development of a class based system in English I ran into a difficulty comprehending the best structure for the dynamics of class interactions. I then replicated a similar system in Irish and resolved the comprehension difficulties. A little later I got lost in Irish and quickly resolved the problem by updating the English class structure. This gives us two natural languages to work with being mediated by the language of the particular design process under development. In my case it is the mathematics of the Piverse, other's of course will have different areas of consideration.

Language Adaptation

Some years ago I developed a software system which was based on the adaptation of core elements of the Squeak smalltalk system into Irish in such a way that all reserved words, were written in the Irish language. I began this process because I was designing an animation system for encouraging children to explore the Piverse, the transcendental world of numbers. This world is quite different from the ordinary world where numbers are treated simply as strings of digits, whereas in the Piverse, numbers are sounds, shapes and dynamic forms.

As it would happen I also began re-learning the Irish language after a long absence, much of which was taken up with a number of different computer languages, and one thing that always struck me was how far apart natural languages and programming languages are. One day I needed to develop a new class for a number. This was necessary because I needed to trap the arithmetic operations so that they could be displayed as a dynamic clickable animation, in other words a child could be practising a particular mental technique, and then checking against a similar animation. They could pause the animation at any time and find out from where a particular digit had emerged. Many other possibilities are obviously possible in this regard with music and sounds as well.

Any way I wrote the classes and they opened up a whole world of possibilities, which I eventually called language core programming. Which essentially meant that a software designer working deep in his own area could write software in his own native tongue, even his own very localised native dialect, and it would run on any properly equipped system in the world.

I have set up two blogs, Eireland to discuss topics in mainly English, and Banba to discuss topics in mainly Irish.

If you haven't done so you might like to leave a little comment, your interest in this project, and maybe something about your own area of interest. I would also suggest that you follow the mouse down the first post on the blog as this will give you an idea of where we're going.

Squeak

Squeak is a lovely software system ideally designed for education. It allows children to set up their own little projects and to communicate in a nice rich environment. They can learn the fundamentals of creating dynamic projects using a range of different approaches from simple to use and put together scriptable objects to more advanced tile based design.

For teachers there is the possibility of developing knowledge pathways, so that a child can choose which area of knowledge the wish to pursue, just like chasing the mouse.

For developers there is the opportunity to expand and explore the potential for building on system that has, really got an enormous amount of imagination built into it.

I'm off now, why don't you take a visit to Squeakland, and see for yourself.