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The tech community greatly benefits from settling on a lingua franca. Imagine if everyone posted on StackExchange using their native tongue.

pgeorgi 7y ago
> The tech community greatly benefits from settling on a lingua franca Maybe we see that in a few years, with everything moving to Chinese. > Imagine if everyone posted on StackExchange using their native tongue. Imagine users going to forums in their own language. People actually do that.
- astura 7y ago
  People have been talking about "everything will be moving to Chinese in the next few years" for the last ~20 years.
  - pgeorgi 7y ago
    I'm well aware. But China is also the only country (or even bloc) in the world that's aiming for a fully internal supply chain for high tech. Not sure you can transform basic materials into a laptop (to pick one simple example) at scale without China anymore, but China is on a pretty successful track to do that without anybody else. Once they get there, I'm not sure they have a lot of motivation left to do high-tech on foreigners' terms and in foreign languages. While it doesn't follow that "we" need to learn Chinese then, whatever they'll use instead of StackExchange will simply outnumber the English version.
    - ripdog 7y ago
      For hardware, perhaps, but the Chinese have no realistic way to replace the rest of the world for software. If they want to sell their hardware to the rest of the world, English is the only realistic language to use for that. I see no evidence of mass learning of Chinese anywhere.
    - Animats 7y ago
      The replacement for StackExchange already exists, on WeChat. More for hardware than for software.
- marcoseliziario 7y ago
  Probably the Chinese will embrace and extend the English language, the way the US did.
  - pyrale 7y ago
    The US did not embrace english, the US were a set of english colonists who managed to absorb lots of foreigners with the clear contract that not adapting to their culture/language would result in bad outcomes.

pgeorgi 7y ago

> The tech community greatly benefits from settling on a lingua franca Maybe we see that in a few years, with everything moving to Chinese. > Imagine if everyone posted on StackExchange using their native tongue. Imagine users going to forums in their own language. People actually do that.

astura 7y ago
People have been talking about "everything will be moving to Chinese in the next few years" for the last ~20 years.
- pgeorgi 7y ago
  I'm well aware. But China is also the only country (or even bloc) in the world that's aiming for a fully internal supply chain for high tech. Not sure you can transform basic materials into a laptop (to pick one simple example) at scale without China anymore, but China is on a pretty successful track to do that without anybody else. Once they get there, I'm not sure they have a lot of motivation left to do high-tech on foreigners' terms and in foreign languages. While it doesn't follow that "we" need to learn Chinese then, whatever they'll use instead of StackExchange will simply outnumber the English version.
  - ripdog 7y ago
    For hardware, perhaps, but the Chinese have no realistic way to replace the rest of the world for software. If they want to sell their hardware to the rest of the world, English is the only realistic language to use for that. I see no evidence of mass learning of Chinese anywhere.
  - Animats 7y ago
    The replacement for StackExchange already exists, on WeChat. More for hardware than for software.
marcoseliziario 7y ago
Probably the Chinese will embrace and extend the English language, the way the US did.
- pyrale 7y ago
  The US did not embrace english, the US were a set of english colonists who managed to absorb lots of foreigners with the clear contract that not adapting to their culture/language would result in bad outcomes.