Language as the Ultimate Weapon

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"But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought."
-George Orwell, 1984 [1] 

As part of the subject Programming Languages, I read Nineteen Eighty-Four, a dystopian novel written by George Orwell. I really enjoyed this book, it is written very intelligently, Orwell managed to build a complex and detailed universe. Something that surprised me enough was the language so well structured that the writer created: its origin, its bases, its grammar rules, its use. Amazing!

But ... what does this novel have to do with a course in programming languages? The answer is given by Jem Berkes, in his article Language as the "Ultimate Weapon" in Nineteen Eighty-Four. 

First, we need to understand the following: in the novel, political power makes use of language to emulate the truth, deceive the public and convince them of the good work that the "big brother" does. They manage to manipulate and change and control the thought, without failures. [1]

Berkes reminds us that the government of the novel aims to reduce to the maximum, for this way limit thought, . "... when the words that describe a particular thought are completely absent from a language, that thought becomes more difficult to think and communicate."[2]

This reminds me of that hypothesis of Sapir-Whorf, which Paul Graham introduced to us in his article Beating the Averages, that said: This reminds me of that hypothesis of the linguists Edward Sapir and Benjamin Lee Whorf, which Bryan Hayes presented to us in his article The Semicolon Wars, which said: "what you can think is conditioned by what language you think in." [3] I completely agree because of your knowledge, skills and the way you think, can be a limitation when using a programming language or not. 
In the same way, a programming language, with certain characteristics and limitations, with certain functionalities and power, can reduce to a programmer the options when creating something. 
A programmer may be accustomed to using certain language and a certain programming technique, this limits his thinking, because he may ignore that other languages or other techniques can make a certain problem easier or have much more power when building certain applications. If we see it this way, Lisp has a very broad language, which instead of reducing thought, expands it. Or at least that's what I think, for all I've learned the course with Clojure.

In conclusion, a programming language or technique can greatly influence the way a programmer thinks, and Orwell let us know that this is not always good. Expand your language!


References:
[1] Orwell, George. Nineteen Eighty-Four. London: Penguin Books, 1990.
[2] Berkes, Jem. Language as the "Ultimate Weapon" in Nineteen Eighty-Four. Available at: http://www.berkes.ca/archive/berkes_1984_language.html 
[3] Hayes, B. The Semicolon Wars. American scientist. Available at: http://webcem01.cem.itesm.mx:8005/s201613/tc2006/semicolon_wars.pdf

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