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You seem to be making the assumption that English is as popular and widely used as C. I would like to remind you that it is only the case in western parts of th

You seem to be making the assumption that English is as popular and widely used as C. I would like to remind you that it is only the case in western parts of the world, which is by far, not the majority.

Nursie 10y ago
Everyone in China learns English now, and a lot of the Far East has English (or Panglish, Singlish etc) as a major language. And it's pretty popular in India. Nor sayng it's perfect and universal, but it is pretty widespread even outside "The West"
- fnj 10y ago
  Not quite. A lot/most of Chinese have only learned Chenglish. That's not a criticism; it's an observation. IME, Indians and Germans who use English are generally extremely proficient in it.
Xophmeister 10y ago
I think it's a reasonable assumption. The people who can speak English, whether as a first, second or foreign language, is about 1.5 billion.[1] Comparable to Mandarin speakers.[2] So, about 20% of all humans. What proportion of developers can write C at an analogous level to first, second or foreign language? 20% seems like quite a good ball park estimate, from my (anecdotal) experience. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_language https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_language [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandarin_Chinese https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandarin_Chinese
- adrianN 10y ago
  Note that the numbers for English are from 2006, the numbers for Mandarin (960 Million) are from 2010 and they lump together all the different (not mutually intelligible) dialects of Mandarin.
  - Xophmeister 10y ago
    Noted, but it doesn't detract from my point about C. The number of Mandarin speakers was only to refute the OP's assertion that an anglocentric view of the world biases the opinion of how popular English is as a world language; this is not the case, it is genuinely popular.
    - adrianN 10y ago
      I think it's actually more popular (relatively speaking) than your numbers suggest because of the points I mentioned.
      - Xophmeister 10y ago
        Indeed :)

Nursie 10y ago

Everyone in China learns English now, and a lot of the Far East has English (or Panglish, Singlish etc) as a major language. And it's pretty popular in India. Nor sayng it's perfect and universal, but it is pretty widespread even outside "The West"

fnj 10y ago
Not quite. A lot/most of Chinese have only learned Chenglish. That's not a criticism; it's an observation. IME, Indians and Germans who use English are generally extremely proficient in it.

Xophmeister 10y ago

I think it's a reasonable assumption. The people who can speak English, whether as a first, second or foreign language, is about 1.5 billion.[1] Comparable to Mandarin speakers.[2] So, about 20% of all humans. What proportion of developers can write C at an analogous level to first, second or foreign language? 20% seems like quite a good ball park estimate, from my (anecdotal) experience. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_language https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_language [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandarin_Chinese https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandarin_Chinese

adrianN 10y ago
Note that the numbers for English are from 2006, the numbers for Mandarin (960 Million) are from 2010 and they lump together all the different (not mutually intelligible) dialects of Mandarin.
- Xophmeister 10y ago
  Noted, but it doesn't detract from my point about C. The number of Mandarin speakers was only to refute the OP's assertion that an anglocentric view of the world biases the opinion of how popular English is as a world language; this is not the case, it is genuinely popular.
  - adrianN 10y ago
    I think it's actually more popular (relatively speaking) than your numbers suggest because of the points I mentioned.
    - Xophmeister 10y ago
      Indeed :)