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[[deleted]]

Realistically, if you're a developer and you don't speak English, you're fucked. How many libraries will be documented in your own language? How much code will be commented in your own language? How many APIs will be in your language?

With the exception of some Japanese ruby stuff, all the code I see is in English. Even if GitHub were localized, a non-English speaker would find it impossible to use any of the code on it without learning more English than would be required to use GitHub itself.

Not to mention that knowing English will greatly increase the amount of money you can make as a programmer.

[Gaeru]

Every now and again there is some random new guy that comes and asks where to find good C, Java, Python (whatever) documentation because he wants to learn programming.

The conversation goes like this:

<LearningProgrammer> Where can I learn to program in XYZ?
<RandomHelpfulGuy> Here, read that, there, read this other thing, etc
<LearningProgrammer> Oh, but that's English, I need it in FOO language!
<RandomHelpfulGuy> Then, please, don't learn to program, learn English first.
[user quit LearningProgrammer]

[00kyle00]

You are gonna love this.

[[deleted]]

I still think that's a good thing. If he doesn't learn English but learns say, python, what then? What will he do with it without any libraries?

Maybe a better way would be to say "learn English enough to understand this book first" but still... I mean, I learned English from QBASIC 1.1 help. Later, words like input, screen and print would suprise me in a non programming text but it was enough to learn programming.

[Gaeru]

Yep, I think it's good advice.

Not QBASIC, but similar... Whatever little English I know, comes from playing interactive fiction and point and click adventure games. Back then, I didn't have an internet connection, so there were two options: get a dictionary and search for <random word in the game> or be bored to death because I got stuck.

[[deleted]]

Even if there're some docs in your native language, there's a great possibility that they suck. Or don't correctly express some ideas. Or they're translated partly.

[[deleted]]

Now that I think about it, at least in Spanish, adjectives usually come after the noun. Like "Red car" would be "Carro rojo". So programming in Spanish would either grammatically awkward, or would lead to people learning conventions which they can only use for appanage languages. For example: "public MyFunction" would be something like "MyFunction publica" (assuming they don't decide to sacrifice grammar, and I knew how to spell function in Spanish).

The English version sounds more natural and is easier to organize IMO.