It just struck me
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It just struck me that it must be difficult to be a programmer in a non-English-speaking country because all of the classes and function names in a given framework are in English, so picking the correct class/method must be somewhat difficult.
".45 ACP - because shooting twice is just silly" - JSOP, 2010
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You can never have too much ammo - unless you're swimming, or on fire. - JSOP, 2010
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When you pry the gun from my cold dead hands, be careful - the barrel will be very hot. - JSOP, 2013I'm bilingual, but my first / home language is Afrikaans (close to Dutch). All my IT study material was in English, so when I work I think in English and it's probably the same for a lot of IT professionals. The computer terms in Afrikaans are quite funny.
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It just struck me that it must be difficult to be a programmer in a non-English-speaking country because all of the classes and function names in a given framework are in English, so picking the correct class/method must be somewhat difficult.
".45 ACP - because shooting twice is just silly" - JSOP, 2010
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You can never have too much ammo - unless you're swimming, or on fire. - JSOP, 2010
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When you pry the gun from my cold dead hands, be careful - the barrel will be very hot. - JSOP, 2013Especially when the non-english programmer used bad spelling and grammar naming methods. RecieveThing :~
GCS d-- s-/++ a- C++++ U+++ P- L+@ E-- W++ N+ o+ K- w+++ O? M-- V? PS+ PE- Y+ PGP t+ 5? X R+++ tv-- b+(+++) DI+++ D++ G e++ h--- ++>+++ y+++* Weapons extension: ma- k++ F+2 X
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One of the great things about C is that it uses symbols more than words. (If you can trust Bing translate...)
/* German C dialect */
define wenn if
define während while
define fort do
define anderes else
define brechen break
define weiterhin continue
define schalter switch
define fall case
/* etc. */
Argh! Reminds my of the times when there was localised Basic versions. Even VB.Net still supports some German keywords: Schlüsselwörter (Visual Basic) | Microsoft Docs[^]:
Fehler Error
Beenden Exit
Nächste Next
Objekt Object
Aktion Task -
It just struck me that it must be difficult to be a programmer in a non-English-speaking country because all of the classes and function names in a given framework are in English, so picking the correct class/method must be somewhat difficult.
".45 ACP - because shooting twice is just silly" - JSOP, 2010
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You can never have too much ammo - unless you're swimming, or on fire. - JSOP, 2010
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When you pry the gun from my cold dead hands, be careful - the barrel will be very hot. - JSOP, 2013I live in Germany and am born in Russia, nowhere near English, but after a while, it becomes second nature (or third, in my case). The internet is English, the scientific and engineering communities use it and most video games are better in English that in German. After a couple years, English became so natural to me, that I even mix up German and English in my own code because I process both languages at the same level.
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It just struck me that it must be difficult to be a programmer in a non-English-speaking country because all of the classes and function names in a given framework are in English, so picking the correct class/method must be somewhat difficult.
".45 ACP - because shooting twice is just silly" - JSOP, 2010
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You can never have too much ammo - unless you're swimming, or on fire. - JSOP, 2010
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When you pry the gun from my cold dead hands, be careful - the barrel will be very hot. - JSOP, 2013John Simmons / outlaw programmer wrote:
It just struck me
Only just? Yes, IT is an English only discipline. And almost all IT jobs globally can be done speaking English. I have wondered whether two programmers, of different nationality, could communicate only using programming words. :)
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I live in Germany and am born in Russia, nowhere near English, but after a while, it becomes second nature (or third, in my case). The internet is English, the scientific and engineering communities use it and most video games are better in English that in German. After a couple years, English became so natural to me, that I even mix up German and English in my own code because I process both languages at the same level.
English and Dutch mix well, so I imagine English and German do too (English being a Germanic language, it kind of works well anyway, and is quite amusing. Like 'fuckoffen', 'to go home'. :) ). But yeah, English has become the worlds language through the net and IT.
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Imagine how long the class names would be!!!!!
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It just struck me that it must be difficult to be a programmer in a non-English-speaking country because all of the classes and function names in a given framework are in English, so picking the correct class/method must be somewhat difficult.
".45 ACP - because shooting twice is just silly" - JSOP, 2010
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You can never have too much ammo - unless you're swimming, or on fire. - JSOP, 2010
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When you pry the gun from my cold dead hands, be careful - the barrel will be very hot. - JSOP, 2013In one project I worked on, we evaluated one open source library which had received quite favorable reviews: We would have to extend it, and all the comments and variable/function names were in French. None of the project members mastered French, so it was completely impossible to understand what the code was intended to accomplish. We had to reject it for another alternative that turned out to be not very well suited for our use. Even if you understand the "other" language: Switching your mind back and forth between two languages, English for the reserved/predefined words and another language for names and labels, strongly affects your speed of comprehension, in a very negative way. So I always insist on one single language: If keywords are in English, so are all names, labels etc. - and also: All comments, source file names etc. Furthermore: There should be no non-English string literals. Or phrased somewhat differently: Since the UI should be in the language of the end user, there should be no language dependent literals in the code at all! Not even English ones. Keep all strings out of the code, use string references so that the French strings can be replaced by German strings, Swedish strings, Latin strings etc. without affecting the code. (Actually, as early as in 1983 when I was working on an office automation system that strictly followed this rule, a university professor offered to translate all the UI strings to Latin. We never offered the Latin text files to the market though - we didn't have any sales office in the Vatican...) Any code module should be 100% language-agnostic, with respect to UI. Not to forget: "UI" is more than "text on the screen", it also includes e.g. database column names, which may be visible to the user through other tools.
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It just struck me that it must be difficult to be a programmer in a non-English-speaking country because all of the classes and function names in a given framework are in English, so picking the correct class/method must be somewhat difficult.
".45 ACP - because shooting twice is just silly" - JSOP, 2010
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You can never have too much ammo - unless you're swimming, or on fire. - JSOP, 2010
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When you pry the gun from my cold dead hands, be careful - the barrel will be very hot. - JSOP, 2013The same thing happens in nudist colonies.
«... thank the gods that they have made you superior to those events which they have not placed within your own control, rendered you accountable for that only which is within you own control For what, then, have they made you responsible? For that which is alone in your own power—a right use of things as they appear.» Discourses of Epictetus Book I:12
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It just struck me that it must be difficult to be a programmer in a non-English-speaking country because all of the classes and function names in a given framework are in English, so picking the correct class/method must be somewhat difficult.
".45 ACP - because shooting twice is just silly" - JSOP, 2010
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You can never have too much ammo - unless you're swimming, or on fire. - JSOP, 2010
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When you pry the gun from my cold dead hands, be careful - the barrel will be very hot. - JSOP, 2013Here's a Russian perspective: The language of programming[^]
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Here's a Russian perspective: The language of programming[^]
I rarely 5 a lounge post. This is one of those that deserve it. Interesting article.
".45 ACP - because shooting twice is just silly" - JSOP, 2010
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You can never have too much ammo - unless you're swimming, or on fire. - JSOP, 2010
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When you pry the gun from my cold dead hands, be careful - the barrel will be very hot. - JSOP, 2013 -
It just struck me that it must be difficult to be a programmer in a non-English-speaking country because all of the classes and function names in a given framework are in English, so picking the correct class/method must be somewhat difficult.
".45 ACP - because shooting twice is just silly" - JSOP, 2010
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You can never have too much ammo - unless you're swimming, or on fire. - JSOP, 2010
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When you pry the gun from my cold dead hands, be careful - the barrel will be very hot. - JSOP, 2013In 20th Century Britain we had a cunning policy of beating and ostracising children who insisted on using the Devil's tongue (Welsh). This was fairly successful in forcing many people to use God's Own Language (English). Sadly, over the years (Political Correctness and all that) this entirely reasonable practice was abandoned because it was somehow deemed to be a form of child cruelty. Let's face it, pretty well everybody in the galaxy and beyond speaks English (we know this from Star Trek and other sources) apart from a few billion Earthlings who insist on babbling away in some form of regional gibberish just to annoy the rest of us. It's high time, to my mind, that we not only revive our old policy but broaden, clarify and expand it to a more generalised global concept of "Speak English or Die." Not only would we be sparing Johnny Foreigner endless confusion when programming, we'd also save ourselves countless hours on localisation projects that only exist to cater for those who cannot be bothered to comply with a simple request to learn to speak properly. Sometimes you have to be a little cruel to be kind!
98.4% of statistics are made up on the spot.
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It just struck me that it must be difficult to be a programmer in a non-English-speaking country because all of the classes and function names in a given framework are in English, so picking the correct class/method must be somewhat difficult.
".45 ACP - because shooting twice is just silly" - JSOP, 2010
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You can never have too much ammo - unless you're swimming, or on fire. - JSOP, 2010
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When you pry the gun from my cold dead hands, be careful - the barrel will be very hot. - JSOP, 2013They don't call it a programming "language" for nothing! :laugh: And in my experience, most American programmers/developers don't speak English, use proper grammar, or know how to spell, either. And I are one!
"Newer" is NOT automatically better, only Different. (And more complex and bug ridden when it comes to all of the "boutique" languages / frameworks out there)
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It just struck me that it must be difficult to be a programmer in a non-English-speaking country because all of the classes and function names in a given framework are in English, so picking the correct class/method must be somewhat difficult.
".45 ACP - because shooting twice is just silly" - JSOP, 2010
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You can never have too much ammo - unless you're swimming, or on fire. - JSOP, 2010
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When you pry the gun from my cold dead hands, be careful - the barrel will be very hot. - JSOP, 2013English is not my native language. (Spanish is my native), and I have been in the developer's area for more than 35 years. You are right, all the languages (at least all I know) are in English, and also the Frameworks (if they have these). I can read, write and speak English reasonably well and all my programs are written in Spanish:
if(UsuarioAutorizado) // if(AutorizedUser)
{
AnalicePermisos(NombreUsuario, FechaAcceso); // CheckAccess(UserName, AccessDate);
}We do not have any problems doing this. Usually Spanish is longer than English, but it does not represent a big difference. Of course, we developers must need to learn English (read at least) in order to write software.
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Imagine writing code and end almost all written lines with semicolons....
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It just struck me that it must be difficult to be a programmer in a non-English-speaking country because all of the classes and function names in a given framework are in English, so picking the correct class/method must be somewhat difficult.
".45 ACP - because shooting twice is just silly" - JSOP, 2010
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You can never have too much ammo - unless you're swimming, or on fire. - JSOP, 2010
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When you pry the gun from my cold dead hands, be careful - the barrel will be very hot. - JSOP, 2013I have worked with Russian programmers for 20+ years... Fortunately in Computer Science, English is their second language! But, you are 100% right. We have a lot of Abbreviations, and weird ways of saying things. I tend to use kinda/sorta which aren't words, lol. So the team is told early on to ASK about ANYTHING they are not clear about, and that OUR RUSSIAN would be much worse than their English. Early on, a piece of code came back with a variable: Svertka in it... It came into a code review, and it was used in a lot of places. They put the definition in the code, and moved on. But it has led to many funny situations...
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Imagine how long the class names would be!!!!!
But you could put all of the comments into the class name!
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CodeWraith wrote:
The customers are. It's hard enough to get them to specify their domain without using 20 different names for the same thing while each name they use has at least 20 different meanings. Getting them to do that in some obscure language, like English, is near impossible.
:D Sorry, but that is part of design and is not a problem; it is the devs' responsibility to make sure that he understands the domain of the user. The user cannot be tasked to model his data-structure, so the dev has to make those decisisons, and has to communicate that to the user in a way he/she can verify the idea. Writing code is the easy part of programming :)
Bastard Programmer from Hell :suss: If you can't read my code, try converting it here[^] "If you just follow the bacon Eddy, wherever it leads you, then you won't have to think about politics." -- Some Bell.
Eddy Vluggen wrote:
The user cannot be tasked to model his data-structure, so the dev has to make those decisisons, and has to communicate that to the user in a way he/she can verify the idea.
That, right there, is the most difficult part of my job. I've come up with a rule about it: people don't know what they want until they see what they don't want. The only way to get technical direction out of non-techies is to do iterations of what they are asking for and show them, until they get an idea of how their ideas work out in reality and get a sense of what they really want. Sitting around a meeting table talking about what's needed is just the first step to showing them what they don't want.
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John Simmons / outlaw programmer wrote:
so picking the correct class/method must be someone difficult.
I'd have probably used the word "somewhat" in that sentence. However, given that I was born and raised in a "non-English-speaking country", I could be wrong. Oh wait, I did learn everything in English from Kindergarten all the way up to my Masters. I still think that I could be wrong, because your English must clearly be superior as you're from 'Murica and all. Hope it's nice and warm in Texas. It's been a beautiful day here down under. :)
Rajesh R Subramanian wrote:
I still think that I could be wrong, because your English must clearly be superior as you're from 'Murica and all.
Texas was a "foreign" country, and it still shows :)
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I rarely 5 a lounge post. This is one of those that deserve it. Interesting article.
".45 ACP - because shooting twice is just silly" - JSOP, 2010
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You can never have too much ammo - unless you're swimming, or on fire. - JSOP, 2010
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When you pry the gun from my cold dead hands, be careful - the barrel will be very hot. - JSOP, 2013I agree, that was a very interesting perspective. That said, as someone who is bilingual (English and Malayalam) and who can understand 2 other languages (50% fluency), I am surprised that people find English to be hard. To me, it seems to be one of the simplest languages in the world.
Nish Nishant Consultant Software Architect Ganymede Software Solutions LLC www.ganymedesoftwaresolutions.com
