”Nasser has created قلب (pronounced “alb,” meaning “heart”), a programming language based on Arabic script, which he hopes will attract new programmers from the Arab world. In essence it is a translation of an existing programming language called Scheme. Alb is not the first Arabic language - that was Arablan in 1995 - and similar projects have been set up in China. Some suggest that teaching children to program in their first language might help them learn more quickly. But to make their mark on the rest of the world they would have to switch to a mainstream - English-based - language before long.

One Per Cent: Arabic programming language aims to open up coding