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Why would it be wrong that an employee working in his country prefer to use his native language for communication? If the team is mixed, that means someone wou

Why would it be wrong that an employee working in his country prefer to use his native language for communication? If the team is mixed, that means someone would need to learn and use a foreign language. Why does it have to be always only English? That being said, I still prefer a programming language in English, but it's not like there are no precedents here. Many Germans are used to writing Excel formulas in German. Why not code? Or, better yet, why not a built-in translation layer in a programming language, that would allow writing code in any language, and translate that on the fly to and from a universal internal format?

hulitu 2y ago
> Many Germans are used to writing Excel formulas in German. And many Japanese are used to writing Excel formulas in Japanese. Excel is such a crap program. Good luck with spreadsheets which have formulas in anothe language. > Or, better yet, why not a built-in translation layer in a programming language, that would allow writing code in any language, and translate that on the fly Because some words' meaning is context dependent. "We don't need no education"
- miroljub 2y ago
  > Because some words' meaning is context dependent. And English is the only language where that is true? > "We don't need no education" Then educate yourself and learn another language. Something tells me you are fluent only in English.
- t_mann 2y ago
  > Good luck with spreadsheets which have formulas in anothe language. Excel always shows the formula names in your system language. If happen to be on a computer set to Japanese and prefer English, just set it to that. Why does the whole world need to assimilate to English to save you the - rare - inconvenience of two clicks?
Pavilion2095 2y ago
> Why does it have to be always only English? Because a lot of people already know English. You can find good candidates anywhere, bring them together, and they will be able to work together. That's the advantage of English today. There are no reasons to build artificial barriers that hurt cooperation in your company and your country's economy in general, other than nationalistic ones. It is especially silly in countries like Germany, which suffer due to a lack of qualified workers and an aging population. I'm not saying that immigrants shouldn't learn the local language, but there should be other mechanisms and incentives outside of one's workplace.
- FirmwareBurner 2y ago
  >other than nationalistic ones Welcome to Europe where every country has a different language that's not English. You call this nationalistic, but how many people in the Anglo-sphere would be comfortable working in foreign languages? A lot of workers, especially older ones, still aren't fully comfortable in English beyond ordering a pizza on vacation abroad, and the older ones also have a longer tenure and a bigger voice in the company. And European companies are a lot older than US companies due to a lot of factors. Plus, most often, European companies build products for local markets rather than the international markets, which means local language knowledge is mandatory besides English, so then when a lot of the product management, sales, marketing, customer support is all done in the local language, how can you expect to have the SW dev team to be the only insular one without speaking the local language? >which suffer due to a lack of qualified workers There's no skill shortage in IT work. Every open position gets enough applications form local candidates in this economy. The skill shortage is in poorly paid hard labor jobs that nobody likes to do like elderly care or construction or that requires doing night shifts.
bakuninsbart 2y ago
One of the unexpected tough parts during my CS studies was keeping track of the german translations of terms. I would sit in an exam and wonder what Halde (Heap) was again. 98% of interesting literature is in English, and even if the lecture was in German, the recommended literature would usually be in English. In my job, I'm thinking and writing in English, then sometimes translate back to German if need be. Switching to an English keyboard was a major improvement, as many really important strokes are less intuitive in the german layout ( {} for example). I would be really peeved if a random guy on my team could force all of us to program in German. It creates a lot of unnecessary friction.
- majewsky 2y ago
  My favorite hate term from that category is my Operating Systems professor saying "I-Knoten" for inode. Not "Indexknoten" oder anything, just the letter I + "Knoten".
- yellowmoneybank 2y ago
  Erlangen?

hulitu 2y ago

> Many Germans are used to writing Excel formulas in German. And many Japanese are used to writing Excel formulas in Japanese. Excel is such a crap program. Good luck with spreadsheets which have formulas in anothe language. > Or, better yet, why not a built-in translation layer in a programming language, that would allow writing code in any language, and translate that on the fly Because some words' meaning is context dependent. "We don't need no education"

miroljub 2y ago
> Because some words' meaning is context dependent. And English is the only language where that is true? > "We don't need no education" Then educate yourself and learn another language. Something tells me you are fluent only in English.
t_mann 2y ago
> Good luck with spreadsheets which have formulas in anothe language. Excel always shows the formula names in your system language. If happen to be on a computer set to Japanese and prefer English, just set it to that. Why does the whole world need to assimilate to English to save you the - rare - inconvenience of two clicks?

Pavilion2095 2y ago

> Why does it have to be always only English? Because a lot of people already know English. You can find good candidates anywhere, bring them together, and they will be able to work together. That's the advantage of English today. There are no reasons to build artificial barriers that hurt cooperation in your company and your country's economy in general, other than nationalistic ones. It is especially silly in countries like Germany, which suffer due to a lack of qualified workers and an aging population. I'm not saying that immigrants shouldn't learn the local language, but there should be other mechanisms and incentives outside of one's workplace.

FirmwareBurner 2y ago
>other than nationalistic ones Welcome to Europe where every country has a different language that's not English. You call this nationalistic, but how many people in the Anglo-sphere would be comfortable working in foreign languages? A lot of workers, especially older ones, still aren't fully comfortable in English beyond ordering a pizza on vacation abroad, and the older ones also have a longer tenure and a bigger voice in the company. And European companies are a lot older than US companies due to a lot of factors. Plus, most often, European companies build products for local markets rather than the international markets, which means local language knowledge is mandatory besides English, so then when a lot of the product management, sales, marketing, customer support is all done in the local language, how can you expect to have the SW dev team to be the only insular one without speaking the local language? >which suffer due to a lack of qualified workers There's no skill shortage in IT work. Every open position gets enough applications form local candidates in this economy. The skill shortage is in poorly paid hard labor jobs that nobody likes to do like elderly care or construction or that requires doing night shifts.

bakuninsbart 2y ago

One of the unexpected tough parts during my CS studies was keeping track of the german translations of terms. I would sit in an exam and wonder what Halde (Heap) was again. 98% of interesting literature is in English, and even if the lecture was in German, the recommended literature would usually be in English. In my job, I'm thinking and writing in English, then sometimes translate back to German if need be. Switching to an English keyboard was a major improvement, as many really important strokes are less intuitive in the german layout ( {} for example). I would be really peeved if a random guy on my team could force all of us to program in German. It creates a lot of unnecessary friction.

majewsky 2y ago
My favorite hate term from that category is my Operating Systems professor saying "I-Knoten" for inode. Not "Indexknoten" oder anything, just the letter I + "Knoten".
yellowmoneybank 2y ago
Erlangen?