I never touched a line of source code until after college. In college I studied history, focusing on the "Middle East" [1]. I took 3 years of Arabic in a (failed) attempt to use Arabic texts as primary sources in my thesis. Short story long, something about the highly structured and patterned nature of Arabic primed my mind for programming and made me more likely to enjoy programming. If you're looking for a pure intellectual pursuit, akin to how people recommend studying math just for the new ways of thinking that it provides, I heartily recommend studying Arabic
[1] Historians often call attention to that phrase because it has controversial history and connotations
Speaking of languages with an affinity to a specific characteristic, Urdu - a mix of Persian, Arabic, Hindi, Sanskrit - is another language that somehow seems "naturally" suited for romance and poetry (it's called the the language of poets in the indian subcontinent). The Mughal rulers of India who popularised it were huge patrons of arts, and thus there is large trove of literature and poems in Urdu.
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I never touched a line of source code until after college. In college I studied history, focusing on the "Middle East" [1]. I took 3 years of Arabic in a (failed) attempt to use Arabic texts as primary sources in my thesis. Short story long, something about the highly structured and patterned nature of Arabic primed my mind for programming and made me more likely to enjoy programming. If you're looking for a pure intellectual pursuit, akin to how people recommend studying math just for the new ways of thinking that it provides, I heartily recommend studying Arabic
[1] Historians often call attention to that phrase because it has controversial history and connotations
You might enjoy this blog post which (after a few paragraphs) is about a programming language structured around roots similarly to how Arabic is structured: https://quuxplusone.github.io/blog/2024/03/31/ed-catmurs-tri...
The triliteral root system is exactly the thing about Arabic that fascinated me and probably primed me for programming. Thanks for sharing.
I agree it's super great. Every word has a little cloud of associations to go with it.
Speaking of languages with an affinity to a specific characteristic, Urdu - a mix of Persian, Arabic, Hindi, Sanskrit - is another language that somehow seems "naturally" suited for romance and poetry (it's called the the language of poets in the indian subcontinent). The Mughal rulers of India who popularised it were huge patrons of arts, and thus there is large trove of literature and poems in Urdu.