Here's my current working hypothesis. The part of the body that learns how to program[1] doesn't speak English. You hear it even in the metaphors programmers

Here's my current working hypothesis. The part of the body that learns how to program[1] doesn't speak English. You hear it even in the metaphors programmers use: code smell, this "feels" like a recursive problem, "listen to your code," etc. That means to learn as quickly as you can you want as many parts of your body involved -- the English-speaking part, your muscles, your eyes, your memories of all the times you've made a stupid mistake only to have it cause you hours of frustration down the road, etc. [1]: Really, the part of the body that learns anything doesn't speak English. English is just the data exchange format. ;)