8 ms·

This is very true, but it's a bit more complicated than that. "I'd come to understand that the answer was out there, somewhere." The answer is out there, but s

• yen223 12y ago
  This is something I've always wondered - how do programmers who don't natively speak, read, or write English cope with the sheer amount of literature they have to parse to have a career programming?
  • sanxiyn 12y ago
    I don't natively speak, read, or write English. Speaking for myself, you cope by studying English. Blood, toil, tears, and sweat are involved.
    • yen223 12y ago
      For what it's worth, your English is pretty good.
    • aerovistae 12y ago
      ...uh...seems to have paid off well for you.
    • bdcravens 12y ago
      Based on the limited sample, you write it better than many "native" speakers.
    • gone35 12y ago
      I don't natively speak, read, or write English. Damn. I wish I could show your comment to people like John Searle.
  • Tehnix 12y ago
    Very easily. But that might be because in Denmark, it's rather the exception than the norm that people don't know english. Of course with varying degrees of proficiency.
  • rdeboo 12y ago
    In my country (Netherlands) people speak English quite well. My entire (CS) master was in English. So that means literature, class, assignments, exams, everything. I must say it did feel kind of awkward sometimes if you sit in a class where every single student and the teacher is native Dutch speaker, and still the course has to be done in English. But I think in the end it is worth it, because you learn all the terminology in English. Actually it is funny, I only realized while reading this discussion that I always google my programming questions in English. It never occurred to me do google them in Dutch. I will try it today to see the results :)
    • mattmanser 12y ago
      Hehe, slight understatement. The Dutch learn English from 8 is it? Being Dutch, I guess you can't really relate to any of the other foreigners in the thread. The Dutch all speak English so well you can move there and never bother learning Dutch. And unlike the French, who will fake not understanding, they seem positively delighted to get a chance to use English. In fact, I've had other English people complain to me that it's often very hard to get them to speak Dutch to you once they know you're English. The only time I've ever heard anyone complain is one night out in Amsterdam where we met up with some Dutch people and one of them said "Oh no, are we speaking English tonight?" Although I'm a bit surprised they'd have entire uni courses in a foreign language, but I guess it makes sense in programming precisely because it's such an advantage.
      • psykovsky 12y ago
        I spent 4 years and some in NL(Den Haag) and I never got past the numbers and greetings in Dutch... By speaking English everywhere and with almost everyone made me never try and learn it.
  • emsy 12y ago
    I Germany, most professional literature is translated into German. Most developers I know prefer the English version though.
  • stevewilhelm 12y ago
    OT: > "it's rather the exception than the norm" > "Blood, toil, tears, and sweat are involved." How does one learn to use idioms like a native?
    • Ronsenshi 12y ago
      Reading literature, watching films, listening to the music. Basically, delving into culture which contains common phrases, idioms and sayings scattered around. You hear/read them, understand meaning from context, and commit to memory so you can use it later on. This is not really that different from how kids learn idioms too, isn't it? By the way, a lot of idioms/saying are pretty similar in different countries. Their wording might be slightly off, but just by translating it in your mind you understand what it means. Example: "Dark Horse" - One who was previously unknown and is now prominent. In Russian it is pretty much the same thing "Черная Лошадка" or if to translate it to English "Dark Horsey" ("horse" is used with affectionate diminutive suffix). Source: Russian.
      • foobarge 12y ago
        France here - starting as a student and stepping into the university library, it took me 30 seconds to realize that everything interesting was written in English and not being able to proficiently ingurgitate vast amount of it was going to be a problem. I just shunt French as written input for the next 5 years. When the valley called for a job, I was ready. Pasteur said "Chance favors the prepared mind" - he was relating it to the field of observation but it obviously applies almost anywhere. Nowadays, if you have access to the Internet, there's no excuse not to be proficient with English. I've noticed during my travel that youngsters with a bit of education (high school or better) in countries where movies/series aren't translated (because the market is just too small) have very good English level. France has an official language which means that content is vastly translated and this-is-bad(TM) - the we are slower at getting better at English.
        • rjsw 12y ago
          With the change to digital TV in France the original soundtrack is often available too so people can get exposure to English.
  • rtpg 12y ago
    OReilly has released basically all of their books in Japanese
    • jeffreyrogers 12y ago
      Japan is a bit of a special case since the Japanese can function well without learning English. In most European countries and increasingly throughout the rest of the world, English is the lingua franca.
  • foobarge 12y ago
    France here - they don't. Relying on translated material is the kiss of death (it's old and will discourage exposure to the bleeding edge, trains will be leaving the station without you for the rest of your career.) I've noticed good forum answers though, mostly sysadmin related questions for Linux systems.
  • ecaradec 12y ago
    I always google in english and this is a huge plus comparing to my coworking looking for answers in french. Even when they find answers, the quantity and the quality is lesser. Hopefully, it doesn't take a lot of english to be able to read programming question on stackoverflow. If you have difficulties reading english and you want to do programming, focusing on just that will help a lot. You don't really need to be able to speak or to listen which are harder (at least for me ).
• skore 12y ago
  > Recognizing the right answer is the hard part. Very true, but even further than that: There are very few clearly right or clearly wrong answers. There are actually very few wrong answers - but there is a stupendous amount of right answers that are bad answers. Especially: bad answers for you. Recognizing a wrong answer is the easy part. Taking a dozen or so "right" answers and selecting and condensing them into the best answer that makes the most sense for your programming context is the hardest part. It is astonishingly easy to accrue a tremendous amount of technical debt because you just chained up solution after solution into a grotesque mix of "works, but could explode any minute".
  • psykovsky 12y ago
    Isn't that said using fancy words on ALL of the software licenses, that it "works, but could explode any minute"? I could swear that was the definition of software. ;)
• jdiez17 12y ago
  As someone whose native language is not English (and didn't receive particularly good English classes at school, but had access to the Internet): if you start at a young enough age, you pick it up somewhat naturally. Seriously. In my case, wanting to "do X thing in VB6" drove me to read heaps of text in English, and even if I couldn't make sense of everything I could kind of guess what they were saying from the context and some few words I recognised. Do this for a few years and you'll have decent comprehension skills in that language. I guess that's a pretty natural way to learn, rather than being drilled some abstract grammar rules.
  • sanxiyn 12y ago
    Well, before that you have to be able to read Latin alphabets. I had to. You may be fortunate enough to have a native language that happens to share the writing system with English, but a lot of people don't. Actually, I think the majority of people don't.
    • merrua 12y ago
      Learning another alphabet usually only takes a week or two with flashcards though. I wouldn't imagine that will hold anyone back. Though encouragement would help.
      • jdiez17 12y ago
        Learning an alphabet might not be particularly difficult in itself, but being able to consciously identify symbols is not enough for your brain to form higher-level abstractions. It's not unattainable by any means, of course, it's just a significant obstacle. (IMO)
    • jdiez17 12y ago
      That's very true, and I didn't think about it. I'm very fortunate in that regard.
  • Natsu 12y ago
    I'm not completely sure that 'youth' is a required attribute here. From my experience, this can happen later in life as well, though you may be limited to being good at only what you can practice easily. For example, I'm much better at reading French than listening to it. The opposite is true of some other languages.
• jmadsen 12y ago
  This. Seriously - I look around for the library or code snippet I need, I find x variations that all seem correct. Recognizing the answer that will actually work and hold up under stress is a measure of the programmer. A Go-cart & a Lamborghini are both "4-wheeled vehicles that will get you to the bottom of the hill"
• eloisant 12y ago
  As a comparison, my German (as a foreign language) used to tell us the first year we learned it, "beginners shouldn't use a bilingual dictionary". In order to ensure the word you found in the dictionary is correct, you need to be good enough in the language. Often there will be homonymns in your native language, and you'll get the wrong word. For example you want to translate the bank of a river but end up with the place that keeps your money. It's the same with answers you get from Google or Stack Overflow about programming. If you're not good enough to ensure they're correct, you'll be in trouble.
  • levosmetalo 12y ago
    > In order to ensure the word you found in the dictionary is correct, you need to be good enough in the language. Often there will be homonymns in your native language, and you'll get the wrong word. For example you want to translate the bank of a river but end up with the place that keeps your money. That's why you use a good dictionary that support phrases, and even give a context annotations[1]. That makes the advice a bit obsolete. [1] http://www.dict.cc/?s=bank+of+the+river http://www.dict.cc/?s=bank+of+the+river
    • ASneakyFox 12y ago
      You still have to know enough to discern what phrase seems to be correct in order to know that's the phrase you want.
• collyw 12y ago
  I have to agree. I was interested in Linux before Ubuntu took off and because the mainstream. Now when I have a problem I sometimes end up on Ubuntu sites, and the answers there are far from the best.
• sauere 12y ago
  > Success rate plummets if you Google programming questions in a language other than English. This is very true. Not just for technical/programming-questions but pretty much everything. Even simple wikipedia entries. There is a huge quality gap between the english Wikipedia and - for example - the german Wikipedia.