is there is any major open source project that is being developed by Portuguese-speaking people only?
i.e. mailing list, bug tracker and comments all in Portuguese.
Why Stack Overflow in Portuguese?
141–150 of 260 posts
Re: Why Stack Overflow in Portuguese?
#142This 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 stil…
So I take it you code in PHP and don't understand the necessity to have other programming languages.
Learning another language is a foundational step towards becoming a better communicator. And software development is fundamentally about communication. Even if you don't need the other languages you learn, you are still a better developer for having learned it.
And yes, I see no point in differentiating on a fundamental level between human and computer languages. The end goal is the same: to communicate.
EDIT: I also think it is inexcusable for a software developer to not be an extremely competent writer of their native, spoken language. If you can't express yourself with clarity and without ambiguity in your native tongue of English/Russian/Japanese/Dutch/etc., then you have no business writing code in your non-native tongue of Java/Ruby/Python/C/etc.
Re: Why Stack Overflow in Portuguese?
#143> 10% of the world’s programmers are in China > 1.4% of our visits come from China > Only 4.8% of our visits come from China, Japan and Korea combined > So, if the data tell us that we’re getting roughly 80% less activity from Asia than we should in the absence of language constraints, why does it feel so obvious that all serious programmers speak English? That data says it's less. It doesn't say the reason why is la…
When I first started, I used to hang out and ask questions in one of the major Chinese programmer forums. I knew some English back then, but looking at a wall of English text was daunting in itself, now imagine a wall of English text that is not easy to understand even for native English speakers.
Oh I'm totally sympathetic and think it's great to have it in more languages.
I just didn't understand their logic. They seemed to say, the only thing holding back those 80% is the language barrier, and once we break it, the numbers will shoot up. Well maybe. But it reminds me of circa 1999 market math: "If get just 1% of the Chinese market..." says someone, followed by investors taking a haircut as a result of lame business plan.
Re: Why Stack Overflow in Portuguese?
#144Earlier 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.
Yukihiro Matsumoto. Do I win anything?
In any case, I'm not really sure what the aim of the challenge was. Most anybody could probably name at least one non-native-English-speaking developer— Bjarne Stroustrup and Guido van Rossum both come to mind, maybe because I've got language developers on the brain. The only reason I can think of to restrict it to Japanese/Chinese/Russian developers is to use only nations with non-Latin character sets— which is a weird reason, and isn't a very compelling argument in favor of Portuguese localization.
Re: Why Stack Overflow in Portuguese?
#145I struggle to imagine a developer who is _talented_ (in actual real sense of this) in programming yet cannot ask/answer a tech question in English (I am not a native speaker). Has anyone met a person like this?
There are many forms and degrees of talented , and many of them are perfectly possible without being able to write in English comfortably.
Ever met?
Re: Why Stack Overflow in Portuguese?
#146"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…
Then again, a lot of people here (and elsewhere) aren't speaking english natively and might notice a mistake, but can relate to it because they're in the same boat.
Writing a longer text like you just did can take quite a bit of time and attention, and I think everyone who is in the same situation will acknowledge that as long as the text isn't an unreadable mess.
I hope that's a bit of a motivation!
Re: Why Stack Overflow in Portuguese?
#147Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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 stil…
> Why in the world would you do that? Languages are the biggest timesuck in the history of humanity. A language not only express the ideas of the speaker, it also carries a lot of historical and cultural data, I love learning new languages even if I don't become proficient in that language. Being said that, I don't think it's a good idea for non-native Portuguese speakers to ask/answer questions in pt.so > Uhm, no? I…
I've never explicitly studied Spanish, but apparently I've been exposed to it enough in the US that I was able to get through a recent trip to Ecuador without too much trouble. It was easier to read than to try to speak, as I could generally figure out the context of sentences based on key words and shared Latin influences with English. I actually found billboards to be the hardest to understand, which I guess makes sense. Billboards tend to use incomplete sentences and made up words to try to get their point across quickly.
It was just a lot of fun. Several months ago, I started learning Russian. Once I got over the hurdle of the alphabet (again, I had actually once studied it in grade school), I realized that I could figure a lot of things out as I went.
It feels like being Sherlock Holmes or something.
Re: Why Stack Overflow in Portuguese?
#148I have strongly mixed feelings on this. When I was a kid my family moved to Brazil for a couple of years and I learned Portuguese. When I was about 20 I moved to Chile and learned Spanish. Speaking the language of the culture you are in is hugely important - and not very easy. So on the one hand if the culture of programming is in English (is it?) then I would strongly encourage anyone wanting to program to learn Eng…
While learning English will help immeasurably when you're learning to program, the languages themselves are often highly English-baed, trying to tackle programming and English at the same time makes for quite a barrier. Since being able to ask difficult, technical questions in your native language would make it easier to learn, I don't see what's so bad about that. Yes, it fragments the community, but it also recogni…
It depends on the person of course, but trying to learn english while learning programming can create a kind of virtuous circle of learning (learning programming helps getting familiar with english words which helps reading docs which helps programming etc).
It's more difficult to try to learn one ignoring the other IMO. I had collegues that didn't care much for english, but it was surprising how good they were at parsing other people's code and understand how libraries and APIs worked with very few hints.
Re: Why Stack Overflow in Portuguese?
#149"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…
Luckily, English is a language that is tolerant of mistakes.
Re: Why Stack Overflow in Portuguese?
#150"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…
Your written English is better than the vast majority of our current undergraduate college students in America, so I really wouldn't worry about it.
Although native-English speakers are always nice enough to tell me that my English is "good enough" to be understood, there are times that I feel uneasy with myself, because I just lack the practice to be able to communicate fluently in English.