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How to become a programmer, or the art of Googling well

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Re: How to become a programmer, or the art of Googling well

#61
post #28
post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is something I've always wondered - how do programmers who don't natively speak, read, or write English cope with the sheer amount of literature they have to parse to have a career programming?

In my country (Netherlands) people speak English quite well. My entire (CS) master was in English. So that means literature, class, assignments, exams, everything. I must say it did feel kind of awkward sometimes if you sit in a class where every single student and the teacher is native Dutch speaker, and still the course has to be done in English. But I think in the end it is worth it, because you learn all the term…

Hehe, slight understatement. The Dutch learn English from 8 is it? Being Dutch, I guess you can't really relate to any of the other foreigners in the thread.

The Dutch all speak English so well you can move there and never bother learning Dutch. And unlike the French, who will fake not understanding, they seem positively delighted to get a chance to use English. In fact, I've had other English people complain to me that it's often very hard to get them to speak Dutch to you once they know you're English. The only time I've ever heard anyone complain is one night out in Amsterdam where we met up with some Dutch people and one of them said "Oh no, are we speaking English tonight?"

Although I'm a bit surprised they'd have entire uni courses in a foreign language, but I guess it makes sense in programming precisely because it's such an advantage.

Re: How to become a programmer, or the art of Googling well

#62
post #18

"But I’d never even heard of the words front-end developer or full-stack. What was Heroku? Never heard of Xcode. Wasn’t git just the thing you used to make sure your partner had access to the code you’d written? Frameworks? Didn’t you just need HTML and Javascript? What the hell was an API?!" If you literally never heard about any of those during your computer science courses, you attended a sad, sad university.

Apart from HTML/Javascript, which is usually taught in a web development course, most of these aren't taught in usual computer science courses because they have nothing to do with computer science. They are software engineering concepts.

Re: How to become a programmer, or the art of Googling well

#63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reading literature, watching films, listening to the music. Basically, delving into culture which contains common phrases, idioms and sayings scattered around. You hear/read them, understand meaning from context, and commit to memory so you can use it later on. This is not really that different from how kids learn idioms too, isn't it? By the way, a lot of idioms/saying are pretty similar in different countries. Thei…

France here - starting as a student and stepping into the university library, it took me 30 seconds to realize that everything interesting was written in English and not being able to proficiently ingurgitate vast amount of it was going to be a problem. I just shunt French as written input for the next 5 years. When the valley called for a job, I was ready. Pasteur said "Chance favors the prepared mind" - he was rela…

With the change to digital TV in France the original soundtrack is often available too so people can get exposure to English.

Re: How to become a programmer, or the art of Googling well

#64
post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is it a terrible advice?

Because programming != web programming, and sure as hell HTML/CSS is not programming. About javascript(vanilla js), nobody even wants touch it anymore. Almost anybody who interacts with javascript code does it with a 5 foot stick(coffescript, clojurescript), and/or behind huge frameworks that protects you from its perils. Something that is more usable and understandable in its barebones state like python makes more s…

I think you're severely overestimating the number of people who use a compile to language

Re: How to become a programmer, or the art of Googling well

#65
post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your English is excellent. It's sad that a single non-idiomatically phrased sentence can "blow" your cover though, e.g. "some few words", that gave it away instantly.

Hey, thanks. Yeah, being able to recognise non-native speakers (based on accents and non-idiomatic sentences) is apparently a significant evolutionary advantage. I remember reading most people can identify a person speaking in a foreign accent within 80ms. That's pretty impressive! I'm currently trying to actively get rid of my accent. I've been asked a few times whether I'm actually British, and pretty much nobody c…

How long have you been living in Britain, for people to think you're British from your accent?

I started pretty much the same way, trying to make sense of C++ and VB manuals when I was young and I think I have pretty good reading and writing skills now, although a native speaker can notice English is not my primary language.

Spoken English is still an obstacle for me, I moved to London a year ago, I got a pretty good pronunciation, but I still find it much harder to convey my thoughts, compared to writing them. And I'm trying hard to lose my Italian accent, luckily it's not as pronounced as the stereotypical one.

Though I have to admit I've never been a good speaker, not even in my native language.

Re: How to become a programmer, or the art of Googling well

#66
post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your English is excellent. It's sad that a single non-idiomatically phrased sentence can "blow" your cover though, e.g. "some few words", that gave it away instantly.

Hey, thanks. Yeah, being able to recognise non-native speakers (based on accents and non-idiomatic sentences) is apparently a significant evolutionary advantage. I remember reading most people can identify a person speaking in a foreign accent within 80ms. That's pretty impressive! I'm currently trying to actively get rid of my accent. I've been asked a few times whether I'm actually British, and pretty much nobody c…

I always hated it when I was learning German when people would point out that I'd said something silly but not tell me the "right" way to do it.

In that spirit, as a native speaker: "...from the context and the few words I recognised." would work just fine.

That's english for you. When the peasants are revolting, its very different from when the food is revolting...

Re: How to become a programmer, or the art of Googling well

#67
I found that one particular phrase,"technically privileged", both hilarious and utterly horrifying. Hilarious because I suppose I never paused to consider that the folks in my major who were both curious and motivated enough to be involved in the field outside of class to be particularly "privileged". I suppose I should have given greater thought to how unfair it was that read API documents and I didn't!

Like I said though, it wasn't just good times and passive aggressive complaining about first world problems while I read this. I can't even begin to fathom the miserable, pathetic, and generally small, unexamined existence that would lead one to believe that h(s)e is somehow the victim of deep injustice at the hands of those people with their prejudiced technical abilities and natural curiosity! How dare they not level the playing field just because she never bothered to explore the use of code outside the classroom; clearly everyone missed that she's the subjugated one, with a comfortable liberal arts education and regular internet access.

But still, we should all take a moment to recognize the plight of the comfortable, generally satisfactory lives of those among us struggling silently with the burden of "technical un-privilege."

Re: How to become a programmer, or the art of Googling well

#69
post #7
post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is something I've always wondered - how do programmers who don't natively speak, read, or write English cope with the sheer amount of literature they have to parse to have a career programming?

I don't natively speak, read, or write English. Speaking for myself, you cope by studying English. Blood, toil, tears, and sweat are involved.

I don't natively speak, read, or write English.

Damn. I wish I could show your comment to people like John Searle.

Re: How to become a programmer, or the art of Googling well

#70
post #62
post #18

"But I’d never even heard of the words front-end developer or full-stack. What was Heroku? Never heard of Xcode. Wasn’t git just the thing you used to make sure your partner had access to the code you’d written? Frameworks? Didn’t you just need HTML and Javascript? What the hell was an API?!" If you literally never heard about any of those during your computer science courses, you attended a sad, sad university.

Apart from HTML/Javascript, which is usually taught in a web development course, most of these aren't taught in usual computer science courses because they have nothing to do with computer science. They are software engineering concepts.

I am well aware of that, being a CS student myself. However, those things are expected to be learned alongside. There won't be lectures about it but hand-on exercises will be impossible without them.
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