- You can not be an effective software developer if you don't speak English (it's a second language to many of us). - If you are interested in literature, hist

- You can not be an effective software developer if you don't speak English (it's a second language to many of us). - If you are interested in literature, history, philosophy or adjacent fields, reading sources in their original language is an advantage. Philosophers are more likely to be fluent in German, for instance. - Reading news in foreign languages is often illuminating. - Most translations are just extremely horrible. I can only understand a tiny amount of languages, but I'd rather put in the effort to read in a foreign language than suffer through bad translations.