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Imagine you'd asked "Is knowing how to sight read music a prerequisite for being a musician?". You can make music without knowing how to read a score. You can

Imagine you'd asked "Is knowing how to sight read music a prerequisite for being a musician?". You can make music without knowing how to read a score. You can perhaps even make a good living from it - many musicians you know and perhaps are a fan of have never learned how to read a score. But you're not going to get a job working for somebody else to produce music, who will expect you to use the lingua franca of music: the score. If you plan to be the Michael Jackson, Eric Clapton, Jimi Hendrix or Kanye West of software - producing your own thing and expecting others to fit in around you - do your thing. But if you want to do the equivalent of join a band or an orchestra, well... The largest employers of software engineers, the highest salaries and the most interesting work right now, all require you to communicate well in English. The early Ruby community was a self-contained ecosystem conducted entirely in Japanese. It seems to have stumbled along for a few years and only got traction when it became accessible to English speakers. You can write your own code in any language you want - UTF-8 is widespread and non-Latin character sets are accepted in several language interpreters/compilers/transpilers. You will get work without speaking English, I'm sure. However it will be a struggle compared to those who know English. It will mean your income is capped unless you become a breakout start (and the odds are stacked against you). It will mean you might not get to reach all of your potential if you're treating this as a career. It's your choice, nobody will force you, but the benefits of knowing English are considerable, not just for this career but in business in general.

olavk 8y ago
I think this is not the best analogy. You can still understand music and learn from other musicians and play together even though neither of you can sight read. But any non-trivial piece of code is textual communication and you will simply not be able to make heads or tails of it if you don't know the language.
- PaulRobinson 8y ago
  You're assuming the code is the most important part of producing software. Frequently it's the communication within the team, the documentation and the third-parties you will deal with. You can be a rockstar on your own without English. You can't be a team player and expect to do well without English. That was my point.
  - olavk 8y ago
    I'm not going to argue whether code is the most important or not, but I will claim that if you cannot write working code you are not a developer. And if you cannot use the standard library of your language, then you cannot even get to hello world. It doesn't matter how good you are at communicating then. You can perhaps be a "rockstar" in a very specific niche e.g. scripting or customizing inside some vertical platform which is fully localized. Those do exist. But show me the mainstream language where the standard library API have been translated to a non-English language. Another example might be working completely without third-party libraries. Again this would be possible but a very niche scenario in this day and age.
    - PaulRobinson 8y ago
      You're arguing over something I did not say.
erfgh 8y ago
99% of the people who play in bands have no idea how to read a score, let alone sight read.
- mb_72 8y ago
  I don't think this is true - in my experience almost all guitar players, for example, can read tab and I've played with many who can read scores and sight-read to a degree; OTOH, I've only played with very few who were good enough to do everything by ear. For one thing, not being able to read any kind of material (tab / scores / chord progression) means you can't play unknown songs without making a bunch of mistakes. Further, while tab doesn't really convey accurately a piece of music, a score (with all notes written note) can very precisely. There is a huge advantage in being able to sight-read a musical score, and no disadvantage at all by having this ability, so why not learn?
- dmead 8y ago
  This is false. Reading tabs counts for something and people generally get some kind of musical education albeit at an early age. Sight reading (the strict definition) is irrelevant to the analogy.
- alkonaut 8y ago
  If they want to get hired for playing with someone else they still need to communicate using a common language with those they are working with. For someone asked to be a guitarist on a tour that’s likely a combination of verbal communication, sheets with tabs or chords etc. I’d say most people playing claviature in bands probably read musical notation, but guitarists, drummers etc just don’t have the same need (so many pop/rock acts simply have no need). The thing with notation in scores is that it’s nearly a complete mysucal description; someone given a score could play in a orchestra without sharing any other language. For programming there is no other way of communicating than a shared verbal language. A team can easily use any language but it needs to be a common language. Tooling and documentation will also most likely be in English. So while it’s possible in some parts of the world to software development without knowing English, it’s clearly a handicap. We use English for communication even though we have another shared first language.
- 8y ago

olavk 8y ago

I think this is not the best analogy. You can still understand music and learn from other musicians and play together even though neither of you can sight read. But any non-trivial piece of code is textual communication and you will simply not be able to make heads or tails of it if you don't know the language.

PaulRobinson 8y ago
You're assuming the code is the most important part of producing software. Frequently it's the communication within the team, the documentation and the third-parties you will deal with. You can be a rockstar on your own without English. You can't be a team player and expect to do well without English. That was my point.
- olavk 8y ago
  I'm not going to argue whether code is the most important or not, but I will claim that if you cannot write working code you are not a developer. And if you cannot use the standard library of your language, then you cannot even get to hello world. It doesn't matter how good you are at communicating then. You can perhaps be a "rockstar" in a very specific niche e.g. scripting or customizing inside some vertical platform which is fully localized. Those do exist. But show me the mainstream language where the standard library API have been translated to a non-English language. Another example might be working completely without third-party libraries. Again this would be possible but a very niche scenario in this day and age.
  - PaulRobinson 8y ago
    You're arguing over something I did not say.

erfgh 8y ago

99% of the people who play in bands have no idea how to read a score, let alone sight read.

mb_72 8y ago
I don't think this is true - in my experience almost all guitar players, for example, can read tab and I've played with many who can read scores and sight-read to a degree; OTOH, I've only played with very few who were good enough to do everything by ear. For one thing, not being able to read any kind of material (tab / scores / chord progression) means you can't play unknown songs without making a bunch of mistakes. Further, while tab doesn't really convey accurately a piece of music, a score (with all notes written note) can very precisely. There is a huge advantage in being able to sight-read a musical score, and no disadvantage at all by having this ability, so why not learn?
dmead 8y ago
This is false. Reading tabs counts for something and people generally get some kind of musical education albeit at an early age. Sight reading (the strict definition) is irrelevant to the analogy.
alkonaut 8y ago
If they want to get hired for playing with someone else they still need to communicate using a common language with those they are working with. For someone asked to be a guitarist on a tour that’s likely a combination of verbal communication, sheets with tabs or chords etc. I’d say most people playing claviature in bands probably read musical notation, but guitarists, drummers etc just don’t have the same need (so many pop/rock acts simply have no need). The thing with notation in scores is that it’s nearly a complete mysucal description; someone given a score could play in a orchestra without sharing any other language. For programming there is no other way of communicating than a shared verbal language. A team can easily use any language but it needs to be a common language. Tooling and documentation will also most likely be in English. So while it’s possible in some parts of the world to software development without knowing English, it’s clearly a handicap. We use English for communication even though we have another shared first language.
8y ago