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English is the lingua franca in IT, worldwide. Everyone in IT knows it, to some extent. And even general population get English as second or third language. Eng

English is the lingua franca in IT, worldwide. Everyone in IT knows it, to some extent. And even general population get English as second or third language. English teaching is generalized at developed countries, while German it is not. P.S. My English is also "bad", being a Spaniard myself, but enough for working in English in IT (not for writing novels, obviously).

wolfgke 9y ago
> English is the lingua franca in IT, worldwide. Everyone in IT knows it, to some extent. At an internship at a German-French software company there also was a French programming department (alongside the German one, where I interned). I can assure you: They hardly knew English, at best it was a mixture between French and English, where to understand the English (in the source code) you often had to translate it back to French in your mind (because otherwise it made no sense).
- faragon 9y ago
  Sure, that's precisely what I'm warning about: if you need to adapt to the international market you can not wait 2 or 3 years for someone to adapt to a local "circumstance". Not taking advance that in all EU countries English is at least in primary and secondary education, it is a mistake, in my opinion. More pragmatism in IT through the EU would increase the capability for reaching regional full potential. E.g. Imagine you're in Germany and you can not hire an expert in some specific specialty because language issues (i.e. because your staff is not able to work in English). Also, when doing collaboration between European companies: imagine having to deal with documentation written in French, German, Italian, Spanish, Dutch, Swedish, etc. Fortunately, most European IT companies do most of the code and documentation in English (that was not the case of 20-30 years ago, e.g. Imagine having to reprogram 6502 assembly stuff commented in French -or a CPU-less logic circuit, for adding more fun-, or understanding the German documentation for a 25 year old ticket issue machine built in Austria).

wolfgke 9y ago

> English is the lingua franca in IT, worldwide. Everyone in IT knows it, to some extent. At an internship at a German-French software company there also was a French programming department (alongside the German one, where I interned). I can assure you: They hardly knew English, at best it was a mixture between French and English, where to understand the English (in the source code) you often had to translate it back to French in your mind (because otherwise it made no sense).

faragon 9y ago
Sure, that's precisely what I'm warning about: if you need to adapt to the international market you can not wait 2 or 3 years for someone to adapt to a local "circumstance". Not taking advance that in all EU countries English is at least in primary and secondary education, it is a mistake, in my opinion. More pragmatism in IT through the EU would increase the capability for reaching regional full potential. E.g. Imagine you're in Germany and you can not hire an expert in some specific specialty because language issues (i.e. because your staff is not able to work in English). Also, when doing collaboration between European companies: imagine having to deal with documentation written in French, German, Italian, Spanish, Dutch, Swedish, etc. Fortunately, most European IT companies do most of the code and documentation in English (that was not the case of 20-30 years ago, e.g. Imagine having to reprogram 6502 assembly stuff commented in French -or a CPU-less logic circuit, for adding more fun-, or understanding the German documentation for a 25 year old ticket issue machine built in Austria).