16 ms·

I'm Flemish, so I speak Dutch. Since it's a small language, at university, most advanced courses used English (or French) books. There are a lot of concepts I c

I'm Flemish, so I speak Dutch. Since it's a small language, at university, most advanced courses used English (or French) books. There are a lot of concepts I cannot even start to explain in Dutch. I just don't have the vocabulary. I also was really shocked to learn later that there are programmers who don't speak English: I once interviewed a French developer who didn't know any English. He explained me that all his courses were in French, so there's no need/opportunity.

sanxiyn 6y ago
Why are you shocked? In fact I am shocked you are shocked.
- kamyarg 6y ago
  Because most of the CS/CEng content is in English, not knowing english is a huge disadvantage. Now I am shocked that you are shocked that s/he is shocked.
  - mrmanner 6y ago
    Knowing English definitely is an advantage, but how big? If you’re not interested in an international careeer (many people aren’t), you have quality education available in your local language, and there’s a thriving local tech scene I don’t see why it has to be that much of a disadvantage. There are many other languages that are big and used by tens of millions of people. In most of those languages you can find all the books, courses, and conversations you need to take up computering.
    - kamyarg 6y ago
      From my personal experience, best example is "You see an exception/error, search google, click the first stackoverflow link". You can of course find the answer in your native language also, but it will be less likely it exists, it will be harder to find, and less "peer-reviewed".
      - matz1 6y ago
        Google search is engineered to show most relevant result for you. Of course it wouldn't show you other languages result. There are tons of resources in other languages but you wouldn't aware of it, you wouldn't even know how to look for it because you don't know the language.
      - GoblinSlayer 6y ago
        Then you learn that .net throws localized exceptions, word by word machine translated.
- qwerty456127 6y ago
  I'm shocked too. Even if your language has all the necessary words it still seems unreasonable to me to avoid learning English if you are interested in IT. One of the reasons I'd mention: almost all of the adequately fresh information is in English. Original manuals are in English, StackOverflow is in English, HN is in English, English is the lingua-franca for comments and function/class/variable names (I've seen non-English source code some times but that's rare and feels weird). English is not my native language but I'm glad it unites ~99% of the industry and the science.
  - rglullis 6y ago
    > StackOverflow is in English cough cough - https://pt.stackoverflow.com/ https://pt.stackoverflow.com/ - https://ru.stackoverflow.com/ https://ru.stackoverflow.com/ - https://es.stackoverflow.com/ https://es.stackoverflow.com/ - https://jp.stackoverflow.com/ https://jp.stackoverflow.com/ More seriously though, it is a bit of a chicken-and-egg issue: more content being available in English which leads to more people having to learn English and might end up producing English content. But this in no point is an exclusive thing. There is nothing that says that if you participate in HN in English that you must always write in English. Back when I used to collaborate on a blog, we made a point of writing in Portuguese and I tried to avoid anglicisms and loan words whenever possible. My rationale was simple: I was much younger and most of the things I wrote would never be of interest to any thought-leader or something to advance the state of the art. It could however be of interest for those in Brazil that had some interest in programming, and I didn't want the language to be yet-another-barrier for them.
    - wenc 6y ago
      Check out the number of questions on those sites: Pt: 140,876 Ru: 322,061 Es: 122,603 Jp: 22,743 Stackoverflow.com (EN): 19,580,539
      - rglullis 6y ago
        Does it matter? If I spoke no English, I'd rather have 1% of the equivalent English content in Portuguese than 0%. And having the site such as pt.SO is at least a sign that there is a significant number of people that prefer non-English to keep the discussion. Also, there is a good amount of people that can read something from English SO, but would never contribute. Having a language-specific site is a chance for them to help more people in their situation. Again better than nothing.

sanxiyn 6y ago

Why are you shocked? In fact I am shocked you are shocked.

kamyarg 6y ago
Because most of the CS/CEng content is in English, not knowing english is a huge disadvantage. Now I am shocked that you are shocked that s/he is shocked.
- mrmanner 6y ago
  Knowing English definitely is an advantage, but how big? If you’re not interested in an international careeer (many people aren’t), you have quality education available in your local language, and there’s a thriving local tech scene I don’t see why it has to be that much of a disadvantage. There are many other languages that are big and used by tens of millions of people. In most of those languages you can find all the books, courses, and conversations you need to take up computering.
  - kamyarg 6y ago
    From my personal experience, best example is "You see an exception/error, search google, click the first stackoverflow link". You can of course find the answer in your native language also, but it will be less likely it exists, it will be harder to find, and less "peer-reviewed".
    - matz1 6y ago
      Google search is engineered to show most relevant result for you. Of course it wouldn't show you other languages result. There are tons of resources in other languages but you wouldn't aware of it, you wouldn't even know how to look for it because you don't know the language.
    - GoblinSlayer 6y ago
      Then you learn that .net throws localized exceptions, word by word machine translated.
qwerty456127 6y ago
I'm shocked too. Even if your language has all the necessary words it still seems unreasonable to me to avoid learning English if you are interested in IT. One of the reasons I'd mention: almost all of the adequately fresh information is in English. Original manuals are in English, StackOverflow is in English, HN is in English, English is the lingua-franca for comments and function/class/variable names (I've seen non-English source code some times but that's rare and feels weird). English is not my native language but I'm glad it unites ~99% of the industry and the science.
- rglullis 6y ago
  > StackOverflow is in English cough cough - https://pt.stackoverflow.com/ https://pt.stackoverflow.com/ - https://ru.stackoverflow.com/ https://ru.stackoverflow.com/ - https://es.stackoverflow.com/ https://es.stackoverflow.com/ - https://jp.stackoverflow.com/ https://jp.stackoverflow.com/ More seriously though, it is a bit of a chicken-and-egg issue: more content being available in English which leads to more people having to learn English and might end up producing English content. But this in no point is an exclusive thing. There is nothing that says that if you participate in HN in English that you must always write in English. Back when I used to collaborate on a blog, we made a point of writing in Portuguese and I tried to avoid anglicisms and loan words whenever possible. My rationale was simple: I was much younger and most of the things I wrote would never be of interest to any thought-leader or something to advance the state of the art. It could however be of interest for those in Brazil that had some interest in programming, and I didn't want the language to be yet-another-barrier for them.
  - wenc 6y ago
    Check out the number of questions on those sites: Pt: 140,876 Ru: 322,061 Es: 122,603 Jp: 22,743 Stackoverflow.com (EN): 19,580,539
    - rglullis 6y ago
      Does it matter? If I spoke no English, I'd rather have 1% of the equivalent English content in Portuguese than 0%. And having the site such as pt.SO is at least a sign that there is a significant number of people that prefer non-English to keep the discussion. Also, there is a good amount of people that can read something from English SO, but would never contribute. Having a language-specific site is a chance for them to help more people in their situation. Again better than nothing.