Re: Must programming languages be English ?

[Michael Richter <ttmrichter@...>]

On 13 April 2013 10:48, Tim Hill <drtimhill@gmail.com> wrote:

In fact, imho we are drifting radially toward english being the de facto world technical language. No-one in India or China would dream of entering into computer programming without being able to read English (been there, talked to them). Yes, they are not necessarily happy TALKING in English, but they can read it pretty well.

Chinese programmers can read (and even speak) English, yes, but they don't necessarily like it.  (They're forced to learn it to get their degrees.  This can and does cause resentment in some circles.)  The fact that you've been here and talked to "them" only means that you, an English speaker, talked to, shockingly, English-speaking computer programmers.

I personally know a couple of dozen local hackers who rarely use English except when forced to by circumstances.  Their code uses, where practical, Chinese naming of variables and routines (often resorting to Hanyu Pinyin when identifiers can't be done in 汉字) and much of their learning materials are written in Chinese.  (You'd be amazed at how many books are translated quite quickly into Chinese these days.  O'Reilly, for example, seems to translate much of their stock into Chinese within a year of publication if the local bookshelves are anything to go by.)

The assumption that "English is the language of software" is one that's going to bite people in the posterior sometime.

--
"Perhaps people don't believe this, but throughout all of the discussions of entering China our focus has really been what's best for the Chinese people. It's not been about our revenue or profit or whatnot."
--Sergey Brin, demonstrating the emptiness of the "don't be evil" mantra.