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To native English speakers: How likely is it that you would have become a developer if all code was written in Chinese (or pick another language with glyphs tha

To native English speakers: How likely is it that you would have become a developer if all code was written in Chinese (or pick another language with glyphs that you don't even recognize)? Would you have become a web user if URLs were in Chinese? What would be the size of the population of developers in the U.S., relative to today, if all code was written in Chinese?

allendoerfer 10y ago
That is not a fair comparison for most people, because English is the most popular second language. For example in Europe it's not like we have to learn something totally different (like Chinese is to English). I would say most people who have a computer know at least some very basic English. I started programming at around 13 years old when I have had English classes for 2 or 3 years (since 5th grade) and did not have any problems. My biggest problem was the IE 6 box model, really, and that for a while I had a hard time abstracting the "a class is a car and this object is a BMW car" to things I actually could needed. I have to say, though, that I used German language books and forums for help back then before Stackoverflow was a thing.
- hackuser 10y ago
  > That is not a fair comparison for most people, because English is the most popular second language According to Wikipedia, FWIW, 1.5 billion people speak English as a first or second language. That means there is a significant language barrier for ~78% of the world. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_languages_by_total_number_of_speakers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_languages_by_total_num... > in Europe it's not like we have to learn something totally different (like Chinese is to English) Imagine how English is for the 1 billion people in China! I wonder how many people are fluent in languages using the Latin alphabet, or speak any Indo-European language.
  - allendoerfer 10y ago
    >According to Wikipedia, FWIW, 1.5 billion people speak English as a first or second language. That means there is a significant language barrier for ~78% of the world. As I argued, that's not exactly true. As long as your mother tongue is not something totally different, you do not have to qualify as an English speaker to learn how to program. It's the same with games: Sure, kids don't know how to pronounce "Game over", but they know what it means.
    - hackuser 10y ago
      I agree. That's why I was asking about the prevalence of Latin alphabets and Indo-European languages.

allendoerfer 10y ago

That is not a fair comparison for most people, because English is the most popular second language. For example in Europe it's not like we have to learn something totally different (like Chinese is to English). I would say most people who have a computer know at least some very basic English. I started programming at around 13 years old when I have had English classes for 2 or 3 years (since 5th grade) and did not have any problems. My biggest problem was the IE 6 box model, really, and that for a while I had a hard time abstracting the "a class is a car and this object is a BMW car" to things I actually could needed. I have to say, though, that I used German language books and forums for help back then before Stackoverflow was a thing.

hackuser 10y ago
> That is not a fair comparison for most people, because English is the most popular second language According to Wikipedia, FWIW, 1.5 billion people speak English as a first or second language. That means there is a significant language barrier for ~78% of the world. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_languages_by_total_number_of_speakers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_languages_by_total_num... > in Europe it's not like we have to learn something totally different (like Chinese is to English) Imagine how English is for the 1 billion people in China! I wonder how many people are fluent in languages using the Latin alphabet, or speak any Indo-European language.
- allendoerfer 10y ago
  >According to Wikipedia, FWIW, 1.5 billion people speak English as a first or second language. That means there is a significant language barrier for ~78% of the world. As I argued, that's not exactly true. As long as your mother tongue is not something totally different, you do not have to qualify as an English speaker to learn how to program. It's the same with games: Sure, kids don't know how to pronounce "Game over", but they know what it means.
  - hackuser 10y ago
    I agree. That's why I was asking about the prevalence of Latin alphabets and Indo-European languages.