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> in general people react less strongly to emotional expressions in a foreign language As a non-native English speaker, I wonder if this affects programming. D

> in general people react less strongly to emotional expressions in a foreign language As a non-native English speaker, I wonder if this affects programming. Do English-speaking people find beautiful programs written in English more beautiful than others ? Anyone here programmed in both their mother tongue and one other language ?

realusername 12y ago
(French native speaker here). From the developers I know (and that is still my case to some extent) people refer to the keywords as their function rather than their meaning. So when you see a 'while' or a 'for' loop, you just interpret it as a loop regardless of the original meaning of the word, it's not English anymore, it's just code blocks. But I'm wondering how it's interpreted from the point of view of a native speaker.
- chewxy 12y ago
  I interviewed some Chinese speaking programmers in preparation for my Kiwi Pycon talk, and I found that it's the same with them. It's just meaningless symbols to them, and it might as well be triangles and circles.
- eatitraw 12y ago
  Russian native speaker here. I too never think of keywords as words in english language. As for function/variable/type/etc names and comments -- in Russia english is the standard. Russian is rarely used in comments, and using russian in code is frowned upon, so it (almost) never happens. > But I'm wondering how it's interpreted from the point of view of a native speaker. In Russia, we have company called 1C. One of the software products of this company is "1C: Enterprise". This product has some built-in language(for automatizing common accountant tasks or something like that). And keywords in this language are russian words. I've never programmed in this language. And code in it looks really horrible to me, to the point of being repulsive. Here is hello world program, in case anyone is interested: https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Встроенный_язык_программирования_1С:Предприятие#.D0.9F.D1.80.D0.B8.D0.BC.D0.B5.D1.80_.D0.BF.D1.80.D0.BE.D0.B3.D1.80.D0.B0.D0.BC.D0.BC.D1.8B https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Встроенный_язык_программирован...
  - icebraining 12y ago
    We have a similar language here in Portugal (I believe it's a copy of Delphi) and I also find it extremely unpleasant to even read it.
- watwut 12y ago
  Same here. Keywords are just strings with standard meaning I learned and got used to. They are not actual words and I do not relate them to their real-world meanings. Microsoft Excel uses different function names in different languages. It is hell. I learned what the function is used to be named in English and it is hard to guess what translated version would be.

realusername 12y ago

(French native speaker here). From the developers I know (and that is still my case to some extent) people refer to the keywords as their function rather than their meaning. So when you see a 'while' or a 'for' loop, you just interpret it as a loop regardless of the original meaning of the word, it's not English anymore, it's just code blocks. But I'm wondering how it's interpreted from the point of view of a native speaker.

chewxy 12y ago
I interviewed some Chinese speaking programmers in preparation for my Kiwi Pycon talk, and I found that it's the same with them. It's just meaningless symbols to them, and it might as well be triangles and circles.
eatitraw 12y ago
Russian native speaker here. I too never think of keywords as words in english language. As for function/variable/type/etc names and comments -- in Russia english is the standard. Russian is rarely used in comments, and using russian in code is frowned upon, so it (almost) never happens. > But I'm wondering how it's interpreted from the point of view of a native speaker. In Russia, we have company called 1C. One of the software products of this company is "1C: Enterprise". This product has some built-in language(for automatizing common accountant tasks or something like that). And keywords in this language are russian words. I've never programmed in this language. And code in it looks really horrible to me, to the point of being repulsive. Here is hello world program, in case anyone is interested: https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Встроенный_язык_программирования_1С:Предприятие#.D0.9F.D1.80.D0.B8.D0.BC.D0.B5.D1.80_.D0.BF.D1.80.D0.BE.D0.B3.D1.80.D0.B0.D0.BC.D0.BC.D1.8B https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Встроенный_язык_программирован...
- icebraining 12y ago
  We have a similar language here in Portugal (I believe it's a copy of Delphi) and I also find it extremely unpleasant to even read it.
watwut 12y ago
Same here. Keywords are just strings with standard meaning I learned and got used to. They are not actual words and I do not relate them to their real-world meanings. Microsoft Excel uses different function names in different languages. It is hell. I learned what the function is used to be named in English and it is hard to guess what translated version would be.