[jayathra]

I’m curious—do you think learning English is equally easy for everyone? Many programmers come from regions where English education is either poor or expensive. If someone is highly logical but struggles with English, should that be a barrier to learning how to code? Also what was your level/accessibility to education of English before you learned it? Did you start from scratch? Did you know a language that shared a root language with English?

[throwaway798214]

I literally learned English reading the only computer books that were available at the time, mid 80s. That was before I had a single English class in school - in fact I already knew English pretty well by the time I started studying English on 7th grade. I come from Finland and the Finnish language has absolutely nothing to do with any other language (except Estonian), no words are even remotely similar to English.

Also I totally suck at learning languages. I've tried to learn Swedish, nope, German, nope, Spanish/Portuguese, also nope.

Ja jos mielestäsi suomenkieli liittyy johonkin muuhun kieleen niin ihan vapaasti voit ajatella niin. Viime viikonloppua yritin opettaa muutamia suomenkielen sanoja ja taivutusmuotoja kielenopettajalle joka jaksoi kuunnella noi puoli tuntia ja totesi etta "mahdotonta oppia koska mitään referenssiä muihin kieliin ei ole".

[jayathra]

That’s impressive. But do you think your experience is typical or more of an exception?

What if coding was built from the ground up to be script-agnostic—where people didn’t need to 'learn English on the side' at all?

If a Finnish speaker could code in Finnish while collaborating with a Japanese speaker coding in Japanese — and the system translated everything seamlessly — do you think that would increase access to programming without fragmenting the codebase?