non english speakers, tell me: how do you feel about the coding standard being english?

i know it is a given at this point, but i do wonder what it'd be like if it wasn't the case

I have heard non-native English speakers say it helped them learn the programming language better and not make assumptions about the function of the keywords.

Honestly it would be a mess coding wise if there were different language options for every programming language. There would not be a common dialect and it would create sub groups based solely on language.

Imagine if mathematics was not a common dialog between different language backgrounds. It would be a mess.

I think it would be fun if other languages had different native languages, but not different languages supported in the same language. That way English native programmers could experience the language gap.

I guess a language agnostic language would be interesting too. Brain Fuck comes to mind.

I love it. English, specially the simplified form we see in programming, is simple to read and write (for me) it’s also a standard so I know it doesn’t matter if my team is composed from Russians, Indians, Spaniards or Americans we can all understand what the machine is doing.

I’ve seen a code base that was in my native language. Hella confusing. It made me sick in my stomach.

It is little annoying when typing non english string and keep coding, and found out I coded like 소ㅑㄴ

Code review:
color -> colour

@h3rp1d3v are you implying the english don't speak english or

@Frederick i wonder what in hell you speak that english is easier to spell

English is such a rudimentary language that it fits fine.

Do you see the irony of asking this question in English?

@electrineer since english is considered a default for some reason, it isn't irony, it's imperialism

i still need to remind my coworkers that comments and variable names should not be in swedish since it's not a widely known language, we do have foreign consultants at times

@darksideofyay the thing with English is that it’s purposefully easy. Most languages I know are way harder, albeit probably more logically structured than English. Don’t even get me started on how much easier English is than Finnish, even for a native Finn such as myself…

@swagnette we have comments and commit messages in Swedish in our code base…. and what’s even worse, they are written in some kind of dialect/slang that can’t be understood by those of us for whom Swedish is only the second language AND can’t be run through a translator to make any more sense…

@darksideofyay I don't think it's that important what the default language is. But it is important that there is one.

@electrineer great, we'll all program in esperanto 😂

@Frederick English sounds like it's spelled? It's the first time I see anyone claim that, usually it's the opposite. Now I'm intrigued which language got it worse.

@darksideofyay better start with a language someone knows

@Frederick I'm curious how you pronounce 'Queue'

@electrineer Danish. Tho I have to agree with you, English doesn’t sound like it’s spelled, however there are worse examples like Danish or French about. Finnish sounds like it is spelled. As does Icelandic.

@electrineer i never remember where to put an Y or I, double Ts, so many embellishments. it's fine with autocorrect, but god help me if i have to use pen and paper

@100110111 If our linters allowed Å, Ä and Ö outside of strings, they'd use it. We hired a consultant a few years back who was from Kuusamo, Finland. He didn't understand a single comment or what anything did when he looked at their project, he left a few weeks later due to not being able to work with stuff he did not understand.

Gave him a huge +rep to his employer though, he busted his ass trying to get the job done.

This is why we need english to be the default language in programming.

just better tbh, sinplifies everything

as a native german speaker i must admit: for me, english is superior in every conceivable way (except in communicating with other native german speakers).

also, specific to coding: basically all programming languages are modelled after the english language. mixing an english programming language with german comments/method names/variable name/etc. just feels wrong.

(and translating the programming language to german, as my TI voyage 200 did back in school, is just _disgusting_)

@darksideofyay I like your Esperanto idea!

Also I'd rather see Spanish as the lingua franca instead of English, as it seems muy claro and less inconsistent.

But the international information technology English is already a simplified international version, with people from all over the world adding their local idioms like updation or chokidar.

I like English a lot, especially British English, but I don't mind to write "color" anymore, I can try to imagine that's the Hispanic influence on the US language (which it probably isn't).

Also totally agree with @tosensei that the only reason for me to speak German is communication with other Germans. If I didn't have to, probably my English would be much better by now.

Fun fact about localized software commands: I remember there used to be localized software in the 1990s, probably Microsoft office or even a German version of Visual Basic? I remember having to select "WAHR" or "FALSCH" (all uppercase) instead of "TRUE" and "FALSE".

@fraktalisman "used to be" - aren't excel-formulas (still) localised? making "looking something up" impossible, because all the answers on the internet (that are remotely useful) are in english, and there's no translation lookup sheet?

Open office / libre office has proper English labels, and so do the web apps like Google Docs, at least on a computer that has English as primary system language. I must be lucky that I have a choice :-)

@tosensei excel is fucked up in all possible ways

I've seen code written in my native language, and I must say (and it might be because I'm used to English) that it was one of the ugliest pieces of code I've ever seen, there are people who comment code in their native language (cuz code comments have no language restriction), and every professional dev I know is disgusted by that.

I recall there was a story here about someone inheriting a Polish codebase. I recall they actually made it in the end.

Non English speakers probably can't read your question...
But not natives are mixed. Personally I hate local language between English keywords/lib stuff. When I code my mindset is in English, the documentation is in English my IDE is in English.

I know a few Spanish people who cannot even code in English. Their entire domain is in that language and they make someone translate it if they use something made in English before it enters the codebase.

I like it. I absolutely loathe what microsoft does with office (excel in particular) where every function gets localized and its syntax may or may not be different.

Even knowing the function names in english, it's not immediately obvious what their equivalent is.

Everything's in English because every relevant company was American and America was on the top of the culture war at the time .

Bell Labs (C), Netscape (Javascript), Microsoft (C#), Sun (Java).

I think I am going to start to learn swear words from different languages. Then use them as variable names for loops and things.

for(int blyat=0; blyat < 10; ++blyat){

}

This could be fun.

a team lead at a former company insisted that we should communicate, comment, and document in German instead of English, fearing, as he said, that subtle details might get lost or misunderstood if we don't use our mother tongue.

Which seemed quite ridiculous in a company that based software architecture and user experience on either the marketing department's or the CEO's personal preference anyway.

Also many people will fail to communicate in any language and some don't even try.