Word splitting & hyphenation conventions in romantransliteration

[birgit kellner]

Petr Mares wrote:

> Chinese as I know I are not good at programming, surely not as
> some Indians who are often on the peak at least in the
> programming area I know about. Chinese software  bussines is
> basically just following, never leading. The whole culture is based
> on enormously complicated script that is just a heavy bag in the
> software development. It is great for caligraphy or poetry but not for
> the information processing as we know it from the current IT.

This suggests that the character of the script of a natural language has
a direct impact on whether or not the respective linguistic community
produces a significant amount of "advanced" computer programmers. To me,
this begs the question, as no computer programming languages I am aware
of are based on either Indic or Chinese characters anyway, so why should
that make a difference? (whether Chinese people have more or less
difficulties learning a programming language that is encoded in Roman
script is an altogether different question)

Reasons for whether or not a particular country's computer industry is
"behind" or "leading" are perhaps more meaningfully sought in the
economic/political landscape of that country, the degree to which
computers are used (and for what purpose), government support for
computer development, employment opportunities, and so on.

--
birgit kellner
department for indian philosophy
hiroshima university