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But do you have to be fluent in English to be able to compete with programmers around the globe and be successful?
I was told I need to be good a math to be a programmer. Turns out they were totally wrong. Don’t listen to people that say you need x to be y. Most of the time, it’s just someone’s bias opinion.
Myself I think doing proofs in geometry class was the best preparation for being a developer. Most of the people whom I have known, and whom I believed were very good or excellent developers loved their geometry class. That is not proof, just an observation.
Really almost any profession you should (not need) to be able to read, write and do arithmetic. Public speaking is useful too.
You will most likely need to read some technical information in English.
You will probably need to write a question in English to solicit help.
You might find a job working with others who do not speak your language.
Having said that, I have seen where English is considered a 'Common' language. The tourism industry seems to have this requirement.
I know a couple, one person is German and the other is French. They live in France. Neither spoke (past tense as they do more so now) the other language. At a party someone asked how they communicated with each other. "English" of course, the common language. The German is able to work in France because of her ability to speak English enables her to communicate with co-workers.
color instead of colour
center --------> centre
math ----------> maths
And then these new-fangled languages [like Crystal] come along and add to the misery with their:
fiber ---------> fibre
I have worked on a large system for a multi-national drug manufacturer. Some modules were written by Spanish speakers, others by Germans, a few by French and about half by English speakers. It worked well. The only real problem was that variables and function names were all in their respective native languages. At least the module names were all in English (well sort of). I ended up maintaining it because I spoke all those languages (badly) and was willing to use various dictionaries. It was an experience!
In my experience the vast majority of books and internet resources are in English as are the keywords in most programming languages. If you can read English at high school level you should be Ok.
Since programming relies on teamwork, you need to speak the local language well wherever you live and work.
Important to note there are two 'flavours' [with a fecking U!] of English. So, even if you're a native English speaker, it can be almost as frustrating, as most programming languages are written in US English. So, if you're the kind of person who takes a pride in your spelling and grammar, there's the constant thorn in the brain of having to deliberately spell words wrongly all the time, such as needing to write: col…
Important to note there are two 'flavours' [with a fecking U!] of English. So, even if you're a native English speaker, it can be almost as frustrating, as most programming languages are written in US English. So, if you're the kind of person who takes a pride in your spelling and grammar, there's the constant thorn in the brain of having to deliberately spell words wrongly all the time, such as needing to write: col…
With non USA keyboards some punctuation characters are much harder to type or even non-existent.