The Minority Report

While I was investigating the new programming language Newspeak the other day, I ended up “trapped” on a website dedicated to the book 1984. Now if you have never read 1984 then you are a complete retard and need to go get it from Amazon and read it today (its where I stole the title of one of my other blog masterpieces: War is Peace; Freedom is Slavery; Ignorance is Strength).

Anyway…I found this cool article from /dev/Kico talking about learning a new programming language when you’ve already “adjusted your mind” to a certain programming language paradigm. Specifically, if you learned on VB6 or Delphi, RAD languages, and then try to move onto a “real” language like C. I think it’s true that the IDE in those cases insulates you pretty significantly from the actual “hardness” of programming. Of course, C# has a nice IDE and maybe you should just switch to a better language/IDE/environment but that isn’t the point of this article from /dev/Kico.

At the philosophy course, I was really impressed by the concept of linguistic determinism, which is the idea that the language shapes thought. Some philosophers go beyond that: Wittgenstein for example used to say (and I fully agree) that the limits of the world are actually the limits of the language. It’s a valid point of view: you only know something when you actually can describe it.

And where does our language comes from? Well, it’s actually the result of our environment (or is it something intrinsic?). The environment shapes our language. Here is a banal example: someone which lives in the arctic can identify several kinds of white, which will be reflected in it’s own vocabulary. I can only perceive one kind of white (I’m from Brazil), because white is not a common color in our environment. But I can perceive several types of bananas that a foreigner can’t perceive at first sight.
Another trap for developers: linguistic determinism « /dev/Kico

While it’s a excellent post and interesting on it’s own, it’s the 1984 reference that I made earlier that clicked for me. When I was looking up Newspeak, I both remembered and was reminded of George Orwell’s created Ingsoc created language, Newspeak.

The purpose of Newspeak was not only to provide a medium of expression for the world-view and mental habits proper to the devotees of IngSoc, but to make all other modes of thought impossible. It was intended that when Newspeak had been adopted once and for all and Oldspeak forgotten, a heretical thought — that is, a thought diverging from the principles of IngSoc — should be literally unthinkable, at least so far as thought is dependent on words. Its vocabulary was so constructed as to give exact and often very subtle expression to every meaning that a Party member could properly wish to express, while excluding all other meaning and also the possibility of arriving at them by indirect methods. This was done partly by the invention of new words, but chiefly by eliminating undesirable words and stripping such words as remained of unorthodox meanings, and so far as possible of all secondary meaning whatever.
The Complete Newspeak Dictionary from George Orwell’s 1984

In 1984, when Oldspeak was still the normal means of communication, the danger theoretically existed that in using Newspeak words one might remember their original meanings. In practice it was not difficult for any person well grounded in doublethink to avoid doing this, but within a couple of generations even the possibility of such a lapse would have vanished. A person growing up with Newspeak as his sole language would no more know that equal had once had the secondary meaning of ‘politically equal’, or that free had once meant ‘intellectually free’, than for instance, a person who had never heard of chess would be aware of the secondary meanings attaching to queen and rook. There would be many crimes and errors which it would be beyond his power to commit, simply because they were nameless and therefore unimaginable. And it was to be foreseen that with the passage of time the distinguishing characteristics of Newspeak would become more and more pronounced — its words growing fewer and fewer, their meanings more and more rigid, and the chance of putting them to improper uses always diminishing.

The Complete Newspeak Dictionary from George Orwell’s 1984

The purpose of Newspeak was not only to provide a medium of expression for the world-view and mental habits proper to the devotees of IngSoc, but to make all other modes of thought impossible. It was intended that when Newspeak had been adopted once and for all and Oldspeak forgotten, a heretical thought — that is, a thought diverging from the principles of IngSoc — should be literally unthinkable, at least so far as thought is dependent on words.

Anyway, I have no moral or conclusion here just thought it was cool tying the two together. Your mileage may vary.

Under the spreading chestnut tree
I sold you and you sold me
There lie they, and here lie we
Under the spreading chestnut tree