I often use "pom" as a temporary variable name. It's short from "(aux)iliary" in my language. Other words sometimes sneak into local variable names too. Meta-syntactic variables too like "jablko" and "hruška" instead of foo bar. On paper, some people are surprised when I put stroke on 7.
Ask HN: Differences in Programming Style by Nationalities
21–30 of 38 posts
Re: Ask HN: Differences in Programming Style by Nationalities
#22dumb code are nationless, that's for sure
As is "good" code, actually.
Re: Ask HN: Differences in Programming Style by Nationalities
#23I have noted that chinese guys write code just like others but when they write comments in English, they mess them up. For example almost always, when they to save "imap clients typically request multiple messages at a time", they will invariably write "imap clinent typically request multiple message at a time". Note the lack of plurals.
Re: Ask HN: Differences in Programming Style by Nationalities
#24I first noticed a difference in national styles when I contributed a patch to fastjson, a JSON parser in Java from Alibaba. Take a look around the repo; it'll look odd to a western programmer. There is a lot of duplication. And the tests don't have names, they are numbered. https://github.com/alibaba/fastjson/blob/master/src/test/jav... This was several years ago. I did end up choosing it since it really was the fast…
> Test generated by Diffblue Deeptest. I think this is the reason for that duplication and numbering
It's not just the tests.
Re: Ask HN: Differences in Programming Style by Nationalities
#25Have observed a strong correlation between conscientiousness and how developed a country is.
This is undoubtedly due to a self-selection bias in developed countries, where there are a million opportunities, wherein only those deeply interested in programming choose (and stick with) it as a career.
Those in less developed countries don't have the same privilege, with many choosing programming as an easy ticket out of poverty.
Re: Ask HN: Differences in Programming Style by Nationalities
#26My experience, is that there is a greater degree of similarity between coders and their mode(s) of practice, when grouping them by their tools/language choices, than by their nationalities.
My sample size is infinitesimal, so YMMV.
Re: Ask HN: Differences in Programming Style by Nationalities
#27This topic seems like a bad idea
Re: Ask HN: Differences in Programming Style by Nationalities
#28I have noted that chinese guys write code just like others but when they write comments in English, they mess them up. For example almost always, when they to save "imap clients typically request multiple messages at a time", they will invariably write "imap clinent typically request multiple message at a time". Note the lack of plurals.
Lots of Southeast/East-Asian languages lack plurals; I can only imagine it's difficult to pick up if you have not grown up using plurals.
Re: Ask HN: Differences in Programming Style by Nationalities
#29I did witness a Japanese style in the 1990's - a book of coding blocks was being used with the primary value the coder was adding was glueing then together. Back then, I thought it was idiotic; how could a professional sit there and copy from others. I now view it as genius - save your effort for the hard problems.
Sounds like that book was their StackOverflow of the 90s?
Re: Ask HN: Differences in Programming Style by Nationalities
#30https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway%27s_law is related to this on a org/architecture level.
And on a further tangent, I read the following (from a 'frustrated' dev) on a discussion about micro-services.
>Micro-services allow us to push our org chart to production.
I still think about that from time to time.