Shouldn't Every Developer Understand English? 1077
Pickens writes "Jeff Atwood has an interesting post that begins by noting that with the Internet, whatever country you live in or language you speak, a growing percentage of the accumulated knowledge of the world can and should be available in your native language; but that the rules are different for programmers. 'So much so that I'm going to ask the unthinkable: shouldn't every software developer understand English?' Atwood argues that 'It's nothing more than great hackers collectively realizing that sticking to English for technical discussion makes it easier to get stuff done. It's a meritocracy of code, not language, and nobody (or at least nobody who is sane, anyway) localizes programming languages.' Eric Raymond in his essay 'How to be a Hacker' says that functional English is required for true hackers and notes that 'Linus Torvalds, a Finn, comments his code in English (it apparently never occurred to him to do otherwise). His fluency in English has been an important factor in his ability to recruit a worldwide community of developers for Linux. It's an example worth following.' Although it may sound like The Ugly American and be taken as a sort of cultural imperialism, 'advocating the adoption of English as the de-facto standard language of software development is simple pragmatism, the most virtuous of all hacker traits,' writes Atwood. 'If that makes me an ugly American programmer, so be it.'"
Functional English (Score:5, Funny)
Why does it have to be *functional* English? Most of the world is procedural English with some OO English here and there... I shouldn't have to learn a new programming paradigm just to communicate!
Re:Sesame Street & the Importance of Bilingual (Score:5, Funny)
I can confirm that linux is bi. My girlfriend and I had a threesome with him. I thought it would be cool to watch him fuck my girlfriend ...
Sounds like you have a completely fair scheduler enabled.
I, for one.. (Score:3, Funny)
I, for one, welcome our new ulgy American overlords...
Re:Yes. (Score:1, Funny)
lol, good joke!
hahaha as if people comment code and write documentation ... lolorofl. chortle!
Unilaterally speaking... (Score:5, Funny)
Everyone should use English. It's the lingua franca of the world now.
*ducks, runs*
Re:Yes (Score:3, Funny)
Next question?
American English or British English?
Re:Once upon a time... (Score:2, Funny)
perscribo("Salve mundus");
print ("Hello World")....?
Re:Medical commnuity in other countries... (Score:5, Funny)
...use English. Working for a firm that did medical education for Saudi Arabian doctors and nurses, everything was written in English - the default for the medical community. We had to be careful not to write above a 6th grade level, though, to reach the widest audience.
That's not English, it's American.
Re:more then Americans (Score:4, Funny)
The ugly American thinks that Americans only speak English.
Fixed that for you.
Re:Medical commnuity in other countries... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Yes (Score:5, Funny)
well, the French ... (Score:5, Funny)
I didn't expect anything different, in fact it would have surprised me if such a comment wouldn't have popped up.
Let's rephrase the Subject: "Shouldn't Every Developer (but the French) Understand English?"
Re:Medical commnuity in other countries... (Score:5, Funny)
... Working for a firm that did medical education ... everything was written in English ... We had to be careful not to write above a 6th grade level...
"Hello, Sir. I looked at the see-through pictures of your boo-boo, and it makes me sad. You will have to sleep here for longer, we need to look for more things. We might have to find a new red thingy from a person who doesn't need their red thingy anymore, and it may hurt for a while. We have these little pills you will need to eat. Please lay down for a while, and i will use this pokey tube to make you sleep while I cut."
Oh, wait, that was pre-school english, my bad.
-Taylor
Re:Why not (Score:5, Funny)
Why? Because the US and England had the first major commercial air industries.
or, alternatively (quoting from: http://www.businessballs.com/airtrafficcontrollersfunnyquotes.htm [businessballs.com])
Allegedly, a Pan Am 727 flight waiting for start clearance in Munich overheard the following:
Lufthansa (in German): "Ground, what is our start clearance time?"
Ground (in English): "If you want an answer you must speak in English."
Lufthansa (in English): "I am a German, flying a German airplane, in Germany. Why must I speak English?"
Unknown voice from another plane (in a beautiful British accent): "Because you lost the bloody war."
Re:Yes (Score:2, Funny)
It's going to be fun when your bank merges with another (foreign) bank isn't it?
Shouldn't every developer speak Klingon? (Score:4, Funny)
Although I prefer Esperanto.
Re:Sesame Street & the Importance of Bilingual (Score:5, Funny)
Except, apparently...in customer support call centers.
Re:well, the French ... (Score:3, Funny)
"It's the French have a different word for EVERYTHING!!"
--With apologies to Steve Martin
Re:Yes (Score:2, Funny)
What do you care, DoctorMetal? (if that is your real name, and your real occupation)
You're a doctor, no one can read what you write anyway. ;P
Re:Yes (Score:5, Funny)
When I pointed out the oddity of that choice, I was told that even if they used their native language (Portuguese, in this case), that the conversation would be peppered with English words anyway, so it was just as easy to use English for the whole discussion.
I can vouch for that. Years ago, I was speaking to a friend from Brazil over aim. He doesn't speak English, so the entire conversation was in Portuguese. However, when we started talking about technical things, I simply didn't have the necessary Portuguese vocabulary. So I started trying literal translations and hoping it would get close enough to the real term that he'd recognize it. Specifically, I was trying to find the word for "firewall" and the conversation went something like this:
Me: "Parede de incendio?" ("wall for fires?")
Him: "nao." ("no")
Me: "Parede a prova de fogo?" ("fireproofed wall?")
Him: "Estamos falando de computadores, certo?" ("We're talking about computers, right?")
me: "Parede de fogo?" ("wall of fire")
Him: "que??" ("what??")
Me: "A coisa que protege computadores de acesso externo!" ("The thing that protects computers from external access"--I didn't want to introduce other terms like "ports" in the discussion, because I also didn't know how to translate that)
Him: "Ah, quer dizer um firewall." ("Ah, you mean a firewall.")
Re:Sesame Street & the Importance of Bilingual (Score:5, Funny)
No, you guys should all learn English. And if you foreigners have trouble understanding our code, we American programmers can be helpful and WE CAN WRITE OUR COMMENTS LOUDER, BY TYPING IN ALL CAPS.
Re:Yes (Score:5, Funny)
Agreed. I had the joy of debugging perl code written in Russian a few years back. Not fun.
I can imagine that it was especially hard for Perl since the ruble doesn't seem to have a standard dedicated symbol. Finding a suitable substitute for all of the "$" characters must have been a real pain.
Re:Sesame Street & the Importance of Bilingual (Score:5, Funny)
Try German. Just about anything that requires a sentence in English can be said with one 14-syllable German word. :D
Re:Sesame Street & the Importance of Bilingual (Score:3, Funny)
Mein Auto gibt mir eine Spassestreibendafahrvergnugen!
Re:Sesame Street & the Importance of Bilingual (Score:5, Funny)
And all these years I thought all functions were written in German:
"GetStringLen()"
Re:Sesame Street & the Importance of Bilingual (Score:5, Funny)
For years after those days, I talked in my sleep. My wife told me that one night I told her I loved her, but I defined my variables first and the syntax was recognisably FORTRAN. I'm lucky I guess, I don't think a non-programmer spouse would have understood.
(Sigh) sometimes I think I work too hard.
Re:Sesame Street & the Importance of Bilingual (Score:4, Funny)
I've been told that the best way to get the French to speak English is to speak French... badly.
Re:Sesame Street & the Importance of Bilingual (Score:3, Funny)
I again recommend Rhabarberbarbara [youtube.com] as a funny example of this. ^^
Money is *the* universal language (Score:5, Funny)
Even while in Paris, it does not matter whether your card's native currency is Euros, Dollars, Pounds or whatever because in all of my worldly travels everyone I have asked has understood what I meant when I held up my card and said "ATM?"
> Now, try talking to an Italian who learned
> English from a Scotsman. GFL deciphering _that_
Funny, once while working in Hawaii, I caught up with a couple making their way down the sidewalk and realized they were speaking German. I slowed and eavesdropped to see how much I could still understand(it had been years since I had practiced). Anyway it turns out they are staying in the same hotel as I. It becomes clear that they think they are having a private conversation. ;-) I follow them onto the elevator, stand next to them with a blank expression as they continue to converse about their intimate plans in front of me, and when they got off I said "Guten abend". They froze, turned pale, and turned around and looked at me in horror. I smiled as the doors closed. Then the man burst out laughing as the car carried me away.
Re:Musical vocabulary is Italian.... (Score:3, Funny)
And speaking of music in German, putting H on the scale between A and C makes no sense whatsoever; what the hell is wrong with them?
So that you could use B - A - C - H in a piece of music.
Re:Sesame Street & the Importance of Bilingual (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Unilaterally speaking... (Score:3, Funny)
Everyone should use English. It's the lingua franca of the world now.
*ducks, runs*
More like "English is the x86 of the natural languages".
(now excuse me while my karma goes down the drain...)
Re:Sesame Street & the Importance of Bilingual (Score:3, Funny)
Speaking as a native English speaker living in the USA, it's almost impossible to find a young person who can hold a simple conversation in English. Most of them are so ADHD they can't complete a sentence.
Re:Sesame Street & the Importance of Bilingual (Score:2, Funny)
In-'f*kin'-credible!
Re:Sesame Street & the Importance of Bilingual (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Shouldn't every developer speak Klingon? (Score:1, Funny)
Mod parent +1 Qapla`!
Re:Medical commnuity in other countries... (Score:3, Funny)
There is only one true universal language and... (Score:1, Funny)
... that is binary, as we all know. Now if we could eliminate the little-endian scumbags who have continuously tried to destroy our language (sigh)