shouldn't every software developer understand English?

Necuno

Necuno

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shouldn't every software developer understand English?
"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.'"
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thoughts ?
 
Some years ago I had maintain and modify a system for the SA client base that was written by Germans in German.

I can tell you, it was lots of pain not knowing what the comments or variable names meant. So to try and figure out what a piece of code is doing or supposed to be doing was a nightmare!
 
I never realized that you could program in anything other than English! :eek: Could I actually name a TextBox variable "MyTeksBoks" and it would still work?!

EDIT: Filters... :D
 
FarligOpptreden said:
I never realized that you could program in anything other than English! :eek: Could I actually name a TextBox variable "MyTeksBoks" and it would still work?!

EDIT: Filters... :D
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you mean. MySkryf**** :D
 
...still the whole article was an interisting read. Haven't thinked about it like that, but brings to though how stupid it was to learn in highscool about programming and computers in afrikaans. most of us opted for english manuals.
 
Necuno said:
...still the whole article was an interisting read. Haven't thinked about it like that, but brings to though how stupid it was to learn in highscool about programming and computers in afrikaans. most of us opted for english manuals.
Click to expand...

When I used to study I always took the english questionare even though I am Afrikaans. The names just sound so wrong when they are not in English
 
Veroland said:
When I used to study I always took the english questionare even though I am Afrikaans. The names just sound so wrong when they are not in English
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i only seem to remember bobbel sorteering for now... but i know there where some other horrid terms that really confused the ****out of us.

i mean who here knows what Her Rem Skoen is ?
 
@Necuno: Well, seeing as you got a bunch of **** as well shows that we were thinking the same. I had to edit my post due to the **** ;)

"The Brake Disc" perhaps?
 
Necuno said:
i only seem to remember bobbel sorteering for now... but i know there where some other horrid terms that really confused the ****out of us.

i mean who here knows what Her Rem Skoen is ?
Click to expand...

Some ones I will never forget:

Ewekaslike geheue - RAM
Sentrale vererking eenheid - CPU
Toevoer en afvoer - Input and output
 
FarligOpptreden said:
@Necuno: Well, seeing as you got a bunch of **** as well shows that we were thinking the same. I had to edit my post due to the **** ;)

"The Brake Disc" perhaps?
Click to expand...

her rem skoen == reboot

though i can't really remembe any coding terms- guess i blocked them out :D
 
Ahhhhh... :p

Boot == Stewel
Remskoen != Boot

So, "herstewel" might equate to "reboot". I remember all those ridiculous Afrikaans terms from Computer Studies at high school level. :D Moederbord, bis, boolse verwerkinge...
 
Can just imagine a program writting by a gangster

Dim ImmaPopACapInJoAss String

or

Dim EightByNineSandwich Long
 
Damn I not too long ago I have throughn away my matric 'rekenaarstudie' textbook. It would've been nice to post a couple of those terms in here.

back to topic. I have had a look at a project this morning. All comments in the project is french and all text on the webpage is french but the coding terms is english, so I can understand what's going on, but I simply cannot understand what is written on the pages itself and the code comments.

Luckely the guy is busy with an english version...
 
You guys might like this, in our framework there is a method in our framework that I wrote late one night and very long ago, it's name is:

public String replaceWindowsBull****EndOfLineCharactersThatAnyDecentOSWillDo(String line)

/edit I see BullS*it and my ec in decent is not coming through well
 
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I have always wondered about that haha, I wonder what it would be like to code in chinese? haha
 
must be pretty hectic considering there are like eleventy twelve gazillion chinese characters ;)

Interesting though with english being the generally accepted business language, I'd have thought IT would follow suit.

Feel sorry for you poor b@stards who had to do some afrikaans rekenkunde.
 
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That and installing the language pack would probably cause everything else to break
 
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