Well, why do banks don't port all their code to recent and efficient languages?
Pretty much the same here. All the code currently in use is written in English and it will take decades to completely transit from English to French computing (let's take the example of France, since I'm French). Add to that that all classes resources are for English programming languages and that to share knowledge between French, German and Russian programmers English is the only way to go.But don't be fooled, in most companies all the comments and documentation are written in French. Variables are in English because it's the only language that only use the ASCII charset. Only recent languages have the support for Unicode identifiers names.
English reading comprehension (at the very least) is a mandatory skill to have in our modern world.
dntbnmpls|6 years ago
It isn't. I'm talking about systematic change, not updating existing code. Like how latin was used to teach everything until nations decided to port religion, science, math, literature, etc to their native languages. Look at how much that changed the world. Rather than a select lucky few having access to knowledge tied to a language, it was ported and made available to all the peoples of a nation.
> Add to that that all classes resources are for English programming languages and that to share knowledge between French, German and Russian programmers English is the only way to go.
The only way to share knowledge is through english? So the french can't translate german and russians can't translate german? What about all the french, german and russians who don't know english? Are they supposed to languish in ignorance?
> Variables are in English because it's the only language that only use the ASCII charset.
Variables, keywords, the standard libraries, runtime, kernel, assembly, etc.
> Only recent languages have the support for Unicode identifiers names.
You make it sound like you can't change it. Like older languages are set in stone.
> English reading comprehension (at the very least) is a mandatory skill to have in our modern world.
This is simply not true as most of the modern world does not have basic english reading comprehension skills. And as I said, this type of thinking is holding back much of the world. And needing to have basic english reading comprehension doesn't mean that computation shouldn't be ported to one's native language.
The selfish few used to keep the masses ignorant through language exclusivity ( latin ). Seems like the same thing is happening here. Maybe it's not selfishness, but laziness or learned helplessness.
I know if I had to learn french in order to code, I wouldn't be a programming. And I'm sure it's the truth for the vast majority of american programmers. I think most people are similar throughout the world and having to learn a foreign language to program is an insurmountable obstacle for many.
Qu3tzal|6 years ago
You can but then it's a work to do for each language. That's how science got reinvented in multiple places before virtually all papers start to be written in English and shared in international journals.
> You make it sound like you can't change it. Like older languages are set in stone.
Do you suggest adding a layer of dependencies and complexity to the build systems to preprocess the source code to make it compilable by GCC/clang/Visual?
And it would make sharing open-source project limited to their language speakers, until you have someone translating the project. And what happens when that person can't keep up with the pace of the original project? Just look at all the material in Chinese on Github that is just inaccessible to non-chinese speakers.
All engineering schools in France require a minimum score on tests like TOEIC/TOEFL (in my school it was TOEIC 785 / 990, got raised to 800). High school graduation requires a CEFR level of B2 (even if not all students reach it) in English.
> I know if I had to learn french in order to code, I wouldn't be a programming. And I'm sure it's the truth for the vast majority of american programmers.
Except that a lot of the world is already exposed to English in movies, series, books, websites, memes, YouTube, work. American are not exposed to French, German, Japanese, Chinese.