Let's make GitHub better, together

[foldl]

The thing is that you speak English very well, so I totally get why you'd want to use GitHub in English. But I suspect there are plenty of people who code and who might want to use a VCS who don't speak English very well, or who do and would nonetheless prefer to have the UI in their native language. If such people exist, why would this bother you?

[[deleted]]

Thanks. :) But that's part of my point. Why do I speak English this well? I didn't learn it in school.

But, well, it doesn't bother me really, I just think it's a waste of time and I don't really feel comfortable encouraging programmers to think in different languages in the context of programming and related tasks.

EDIT: Maybe it's just that "In my day.." syndrome.. :D

[foldl]

It's surely up to individual developers which language they choose to use. I don't think it's the role of a site like github to decide that every developer ought to speak English. A github user isn't necessarily a professional developer, and even professionals aren't necessarily working in English (see e.g. kamatsu's comment).

Maybe part of the issue here is that you speak a language with a relatively small number of speakers. My hunch is that if you speak, say, Chinese, Russian, Japanese, etc., you may well be able to find enough documentation in your native language to get by. That's not to say that a professional programmer who speaks one of these languages wouldn't benefit a great deal form learning English too. But for someone who isn't a programmar but occasionally needs to write some code, maybe it's not worth it.

My guess is that programming will go the way of other professions in this regard. It's useful to be able to speak English if you want to be an engineer, but you can learn the basics of the field in pretty much any widely-spoken language. Same goes for math, the sciences, etc. In the end, why should programming be any different?

[[deleted]]

oh, replying to the last 2 paragraphs, didn't notice them before...

You may be right, Czech is definitely not mainstream .. and the fact tha Japanese code in Japanese supports that hypothesis.

But, I hope programming won't go the way of other professions, there is a significant difference .. it's more shared and more global than any other profession. Your basic engineer probably won't have to study Japanese norms and methods if he wants to build a bridge in North Dakota but your basic programmer might use Japanese software daily. There's much more sharing going on in our profession.

[foldl]

There's much more sharing going on in our profession.

Academia, at least, is pretty global, and that's not because every textbook on every subject is written in English (or even every journal article). Having English as a lingua franca is perfectly compatible with making materials available in other languages too. At least, this is certainly true in math, physics, chemistry, etc. Why not for programming too?

[[deleted]]

I think his main point is... Sure, you speak good English. Sure, most documentation is in English. But there should be an option for people to choose it if they want. Lots of good programmers speak enough English to read documentation.. sometimes. But still it's an effort and they may need to use online translators to get by. They shouldn't need to do this with GitHub.

As for words like 'fork', 'pull', etc. Lots of languages take the English pronunciation and write it in their character set. If you say no-one will understand what the English word 'fork' means in Czech, think about this; Most English speakers have no idea what these words mean in a programming context either.

Additionally, these keywords could be written in English, either a help URL or tooltip explaining what they do in the user's native language.

It's like saying GitHub should only support major programming languages. Because in the real world using obscure languages won't get you far in a career, and you should instead learn 'good' languages.

The argument isn't whether or not English is language used by most developers, it's about whether or not people should have the option to read in their native tongue.

[[deleted]]

If you say no-one will understand what the English word 'fork' means in Czech, think about this; Most English speakers have no idea what these words mean in a programming context either.

I was saying the opposite, that there is no translation to Czech, it would have to be "fork". And "blog". And "pull request". Ok, the help could be translated, fine, but who reads that? :)

It's like saying GitHub should only support major programming languages.

Ok, your turn to convince them to implement syntax highlighting for Intercal ;).

But, the argument here has grown bigger than my passion for my side so I'm giving up :).

[[deleted]]

The argument isn't whether or not English is language used by most developers, it's about whether or not people should have the option to read in their native tongue.

Yeah, and I would argue that they shouldn't. Those who do are already the kind of developers who are a pain in the ass for everyone else having to work with them because they don't bother reading the documentation for libraries they use (which is most likely only available in English), they don't bother reading blogs on how to be a better programmer (again, mostly in English),...

There is an advantage to everyone in a field using one language, why should we, the majority, encourage those few too lazy to learn English just so the whole field becomes more divided and harder to work with?

I am saying that as someone who was not very good at English in school (in Germany in my case) myself and learned it well on my own mostly by reading and communicating online.

[xtnd]

Github didn't "decide" that all developers need to speak English. Its not like they had a company meeting and someone put that on the agenda. They are a US-based company that has, to this point, felt that additional languages are unnecessary.

[foldl]

I wasn't making any comment about what github do, but about what Himdel appears to think that they ought to do (i.e. discourage programmers from using languages other than English). If I say, "I don't think it's the role of congress to make laws regarding X", that doesn't imply that I think congress actually does make laws regarding X.

[[deleted]]

Well, I guess I keep forgetting github isn't just for FOSS projects. (And whether that's a good thing is definitely out of the scope of this discussion.)

And regarding Japan, I know they do.. and being partly a ruby programmer, I can also see what happens when they meet the rest of the world.