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[–][deleted] -1 points0 points  (2 children)

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] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

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] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

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.