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I agree with most of these, but this one stuck out. > I believe that translating documentation is a really important step towards helping people learn to progr

by oskarth 13y ago

I agree with most of these, but this one stuck out. > I believe that translating documentation is a really important step towards helping people learn to program. Someone shouldn’t have to learn Programming and English at the same time. Really? Knowing English is pretty much a prerequisite for programming. Should all UNIX man pages exist in other languages too? That said, of course tutorials in other languages are useful, but it's hardly the job of the open source project. EDIT: "Prerequisite for programming" in the literal sense is obviously wrong. It's very useful though, and pretty much a must to participate in most big open source projects (mailing lists, issue trackers, comments, documentation). Is this really a controversial statement?

avmich 13y ago
> Knowing English is pretty much a prerequisite for programming. Emphatically no. You can be a brilliant programmer without knowing English. Of course, that doesn't say that knowing English somehow hurts. I've met many programmers smart enough to learn programming to expert levels despite not knowing English and having to rely on whatever was available in other languages - sometimes that was plenty, sometimes they had to reinvent algorithms. At the same time I know other good programmers who were faced with the problem of learning programming and English at the same time and succeeded at that.