Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

> it's really a pretty recent state of affairs. A quarter century at most

And? Powered flight is barely 100 years old. For most of the world, ubiquitous sanitation, access to running hot water, electricity, medicine beyond voodoo and superstition - are all barely 100 years old, give or take quarter century. For most of the world - the rest of the world got it much later, or in some places, not at all.

Very little in human affairs is an immutable laws of the universe. Most of it is arbitrary, path dependent, frozen in place as we built more things and made more choices on top of past ones, instead of endlessly bickering about which random result would've been most fairest.

It so happened that English became lingua franca, and we've built the last 70+ years of technology on top of it. Do you want to tear it all back down, and call for a World War II rematch, all for the sake of a dice re-roll on which language we name our "for loops" in? Why the hell does it matter?! English won. Time to move on. Build up, instead of tearing down.

EDIT: also, FWIW, languages evolve. English of 2025 isn't all the same as English of 1945, much less that of 1865. That evolution accelerates with globalization, as every culture contributes their bit to the global whole. See the "Internet slang" or various pidgins that popped up in the high-throughput port areas around the planet; this is the sign of things to come.



Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: