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Why Stack Overflow in Portuguese?

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Re: Why Stack Overflow in Portuguese?

#111

Post by Draiken »

davidcollantes wrote: post #39

A really bad idea. Now a really good answer or tip that would otherwise be on the 'regular' stackoverflow (albeit in broken English) will remain, unknown, on a 'pt.overflow.' That is one drawback. Another drawback, an English only stackoverflow helps a Portuguese speaking person to learn another language that is, now, more universal. Yet another, it fractures an otherwise more unified community. My mother tongue is S…

I agree it's not a great idea.

In the ever growing globalized world, learning english is essential and it doesn't really matter what's your native language.

I think this might increase the mixed language coding that is almost a norm in Brazil.

It's perfectly fine to write code in your language, but you're just limiting the amount of people that can read you code. You might never want a remote worker from outside your country but you can't really predict the future.

The side effect of this is less people actually attempting to learn english, resulting in tons of mixed language code that's just horrible to read, even for the people that do speak the native language.

I can't count how many times I've encountered horrible half-english half-portuguese variable/method names that are impossible to understand.

Hope I'm wrong tho.

Re: Why Stack Overflow in Portuguese?

#112

Post by NSAID »

BoppreH wrote: post #98
NSAID wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Completely intended, by my read. It wouldn't make any sense if you couldn't ask a question that was already asked in a language you don't know. FTA: "we expect almost every question asked on the Portuguese site to also be asked (and answered) on the English site."

It was the same user asking the same question, and the English version may or may not be machine translated. It feels spammy, specially since the English version isn't up to par. I'm not sure this is what they had in mind with that quote.

Ah, I missed the identical users. That is an interesting situation, especially if a user might be fluent in both languages (which may or may not be the case in this situation).

Re: Why Stack Overflow in Portuguese?

#113

Post by 10098 »

dmunoz wrote: post #3

> Without Googling, name any famous developer from Japan. Or China. Or Russia. Many Ruby developers won't have a problem with this.

Even not counting Matsumoto, off the top of my head -

Japan: Junya Ota (more known as ZUN, the author of Tohou series). Russia: Nikolay Likhachev (aka Kris Kaspersky) China: whoever made Baidu, can't remember their name without googling :)

Re: Why Stack Overflow in Portuguese?

#114

Post by JohnnyBrown »

> we’re getting roughly 80% less activity from Asia than we should in the absence of language constraints

Bit of an assumption here: absent language constraints, Chinese and anglophone developers would use Stackoverflow at the same rate. I'd say it's pretty likely that China has a popular programming QA site of its own.

Re: Why Stack Overflow in Portuguese?

#115

Post by lucb1e »

moron4hire wrote: post #47

This is great, and I think multilingualism is something we should encourage amongst dedicated developers. I mean, it's not like we don't already have to learn a variety of languages already. I personally get a kick out of communicating with people in other languages. It almost seems like a super power.

> I think multilingualism is something we should encourage amongst dedicated developers.

Why in the world would you do that? Languages are the biggest timesuck in the history of humanity. How can you build knowledge together if you can't even communicate with one another beyond drawing a square rectangle in the sand? We finally got around to doing counting in, well, mostly one universal system, but languages are still a major PITA for everyone involved.

Sure it may be fun and great for you that you get a kick out of it, but the existence of different language for the sheer fun of it is about as useful as forcing entire nations to play violin.

> I mean, it's not like we don't already have to learn a variety of languages already.

Uhm, no? I know English and my native language (Dutch) and that is more than enough. The only language I had to learn besides my own was the one that most of us on here see as the universal one: English. And for all I care the Dutch language can die a quick and silent death.

Re: Why Stack Overflow in Portuguese?

#116

Post by kriro »

I think this is a very good idea. The point about being interested in programming way before you ever considered learning English is the selling point for me. Portuguese seems like a good starting language as well, well done (I'd like to see German added to the list though).

As long as it doesn't lead to more native language (from people that actually speak English) code I'm 100% on board. I come across code in German and French somewhat regularly and...yikes (unfortunately I know of quite a few universities that actually teach programming with native language class and method names and the like)

Re: Why Stack Overflow in Portuguese?

#117

Post by aquadrop »

Their explanation would be good in static world - we give non-english speakers opportunity to be a part of global SO. But I'm afraid that in the future it will hurt main SO, since core community of each language will move to its own *.SO, leaving english section for native-only speakers. Of course, maybe that won't be the case and I hope they will watch for negative effects. English language as an intermediate for all programmers is a bliss. Imagine how it would be nice if all people had one language and there were no communication barriers (damn Babylonians :) It's not possible in common case, but with programming we almost have it.

Re: Why Stack Overflow in Portuguese?

#118

Post by ScotterC »

angersock wrote: post #34
ScotterC wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup. Matz immediately came to mind. Also, to the question of english but not native would be Salvatore of Redis fame.

So, not to be mean, but can you name his FQJN (fully-qualified Japanese name) offhand? The score of people here saying "Matz" somewhat underscores the issue.

Matsumoto Yashamoto from memory. I'm probably off a few letters.

EDIT:

Yup I was way off. It's Yukihiro Matsumoto haha

Re: Why Stack Overflow in Portuguese?

#119

Post by _random_ »

michelutti wrote: post #106
soneca wrote: post #73

"It’s almost impossible to feel like part of a community if you’re not highly proficient in the language. Even non-native speakers who are fluent enough to read posts in their second or third languages often aren’t comfortable enough to write in them." Wow, this is true! I am brazilian and you have no idea how much effort I put in writing every single comment here on HN. And the longer de comment is, the more stupid…

Why not use http://ell.stackexchange.com/ or http://english.stackexchange.com/ to learn English and maintain the stackoverflow one version? I agree with "soneca", I am from Brazil too and I'm not so confortable to answer in English, but this never stopped me to ask, to answer or whatever... I mean, the real insight is continous learning, we cannot be in the comfort zone. Distribute and divide will result in duplicate…

I agree. Any kind of English is way better then people asking questions without making their own effort first. If the language is not clear there will be comments asking for clarifications. Besides I have edited a couple of questions to try and improve grammar. Other people do the same. The world did not collapse.

Re: Why Stack Overflow in Portuguese?

#120

Post by ardfard »

soneca wrote: post #73

"It’s almost impossible to feel like part of a community if you’re not highly proficient in the language. Even non-native speakers who are fluent enough to read posts in their second or third languages often aren’t comfortable enough to write in them." Wow, this is true! I am brazilian and you have no idea how much effort I put in writing every single comment here on HN. And the longer de comment is, the more stupid…

I can relate to this too. This is why I lack participation in HN discussions even though I've been here for about 3 years and always checking HN regularly. English is my third language and I barely speak it at home. So I still feel really uncomfortable and difficult to express my mind in English.
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