The Ugly American Programmer

#1

Post by worthlessgenius » Mon, Mar 30, 2009, 1:32 PM UTC

"Whatever country you live in, whatever language you speak, you have the same access to the accumulated knowledge of the world as every other citizen of the planet Earth. I believe the rules are different for programmers. So much so that I'm going to ask the unthinkable: shouldn't every software developer understand English?"

The Ugly American Programmer
codinghorror.com

Re: The Ugly American Programmer

#2

Post by vinutheraj » Mon, Mar 30, 2009, 2:21 PM UTC

The overwhelming majority of programming languages use English keywords

Can anyone tell me any programming language which doesn't use english keywords!?!

English is the common language of communication throughout the world, and consequentially the effect has percolated into the hacker world too I guess !

Re: The Ugly American Programmer

#3

Post by pavelludiq » Mon, Mar 30, 2009, 2:27 PM UTC

vinutheraj wrote: post #2

The overwhelming majority of programming languages use English keywords Can anyone tell me any programming language which doesn't use english keywords!?! English is the common language of communication throughout the world, and consequentially the effect has percolated into the hacker world too I guess !

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-English-based_programming_l... I guess the most famous ones are Brainfuck and the Perl module that lets you write Perl in Latin http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/~damian/papers/HTML/Perligata....

Re: The Ugly American Programmer

#4

Post by jgrahamc » Mon, Mar 30, 2009, 2:30 PM UTC

vinutheraj wrote: post #2

The overwhelming majority of programming languages use English keywords Can anyone tell me any programming language which doesn't use english keywords!?! English is the common language of communication throughout the world, and consequentially the effect has percolated into the hacker world too I guess !

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-English-based_programming_l...

Re: The Ugly American Programmer

#5

Post by sethg » Mon, Mar 30, 2009, 2:30 PM UTC

vinutheraj wrote: post #2

The overwhelming majority of programming languages use English keywords Can anyone tell me any programming language which doesn't use english keywords!?! English is the common language of communication throughout the world, and consequentially the effect has percolated into the hacker world too I guess !

Can anyone tell me any programming language which doesn't use english keywords!?!

APL?

Re: The Ugly American Programmer

#6

Post by Anon84 » Mon, Mar 30, 2009, 2:30 PM UTC

vinutheraj wrote: post #2

The overwhelming majority of programming languages use English keywords Can anyone tell me any programming language which doesn't use english keywords!?! English is the common language of communication throughout the world, and consequentially the effect has percolated into the hacker world too I guess !

Not sure it counts, but... the Portuguese version of Excel uses portuguese keywords for all the functions (Soma instead of Sum, etc)

Also "BrainFuck", but that one doesn't use any words at all, just a few symbols.

Re: The Ugly American Programmer

#7

Post by sethg » Mon, Mar 30, 2009, 2:31 PM UTC

I should also note that being a native speaker of the English language does not automatically make one able to write coherent technical documentation in English. Unfortunately.

Re: The Ugly American Programmer

#8

Post by mixmax » Mon, Mar 30, 2009, 2:34 PM UTC

Being Danish I can attest that this is very true - I write my code-comments in English, my business plans in Engish and do my financials in English. Even my blog is English.

It just makes it easier to communicate, and I've never met a Dane that complained about it.

Re: The Ugly American Programmer

#9

Post by mpk » Mon, Mar 30, 2009, 2:47 PM UTC

mixmax wrote: post #8

Being Danish I can attest that this is very true - I write my code-comments in English, my business plans in Engish and do my financials in English. Even my blog is English. It just makes it easier to communicate, and I've never met a Dane that complained about it.

Same here. English is not my native language but I just do everything in English. Code, documentation, blogs, requirement docs, etc. Really, everything.

Is this even remotely controversial these days?

Re: The Ugly American Programmer

#10

Post by Tichy » Mon, Mar 30, 2009, 2:47 PM UTC

This really doesn't need discussion. English is simply the language for science and computer stuff, just as latin used to be in the past (not for the computer stuff, but for science).