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I think I can observe four kind of opinions in here: - Those who agree with this site. - Those who disagree "because information about technology is mostly in
by mrleinad 16y ago
I think I can observe four kind of opinions in here:
- Those who agree with this site.
- Those who disagree "because information about technology is mostly in english".
- Those who disagree "because it will split the community".
- Those who are english fans.
Those who push for everyone to speak english because information about technology is mostly in english.. may I point at the simmilarity of your position with a circular logical pattern? "Information about technology is in english, because no information is produced in other languages. You shouldn't produce information in other languages, because information about technology is mostly in english." Need I say more? Hope not, I regard everyone in this site as fairly intelligent to see the absurdity of such a statement.
To those who say that this kind of site will split the community, think about it this way: more people, who have no time to learn english, cannot because of economic/time reasons, or maybe just want to know about things and contribute in an easy way, will be able to do so. Of course, if we're talking about a "technological elite" (which I imagine you consider yourself part of, since you recognize the need for a unified language), will still have english as a requirement. But the last time I checked, HN was not about that elite, but about a broad spectrum of subjects (and I dare you to argument about the need of speaking in english to talk about Lybia and the Internet blackout there, with several political and sociological implications, not just the technological ones)
And for those english fans, greetings. I'm one, and I'm from Argentina. But I acknowledge the existance of human beings outside the United States or England. Please, open your mind to other ways of thinking. Remember: there are some cognitive processes in some language, which are not possible in other languages. That alone should prompt you to congratulate the existance of as many clones of HN in as many languages as possible.
- KaeseEs 16y agoIf I write {comments in code, documentation, tutorials, posts on a technical website} in English, programmers in Latvia and India who have learned English as the standard language in which computer science and software development are done can read it. If I write it in German or Chinese or Spanish, they can't.
- mrleinad 16y agoAnd if some people in your country want to read your code, but is unable to read english, they can't either. So.. what you're saying is that you prioritize programmers in Latvia and India, over your fellow citizens and the community of programmers in your country? And I'm not only talking about proffessional developers, but also CS students. As I wrote, I'm not denying that to be proficient in CS, you need to know english nowadays. I'm saying that information should be available in other languages as well.
- Vivtek 16y agoSpeaking for myself, I'd rather have well-considered {comments, documentation, tutorials, posts} in German or Spanish than poorly written ones in English. Worst case, someone else in the community can translate them - if the developer writing this information is more fluent in a non-English language, I'd rather have him or her expressing ideas well than wrestling with a second language and failing to document things because it ends up being too much work.