As somebody with a friend who speaks Chinese as their first language, I know she often uses non-English file names, variable names, etc.
It’s still standard Python and C++ though (and excellent code at that!), nothing esoteric.
Do non-English speakers learn to code in English, or in their native language?
Submitted 15 hours ago by TheImpressiveX@lemmy.today to [deleted]
Comments
sbeak@sopuli.xyz 6 hours ago
bjoern_tantau@swg-empire.de 15 hours ago
Preferably in English. Nothing is worse than reading code with a mixture of languages. Although false friends can also be quite annoying.
Skullgrid@lemmy.world 13 hours ago
What should you do if you inherit a project where they are already mixing languages because they just copy pasted from tutorials?
bjoern_tantau@swg-empire.de 13 hours ago
Exacerbate the problem by using your own style that’s not been used before.
treadful@lemmy.zip 7 hours ago
Although false friends can also be quite annoying.
What does “false friends” mean?
sbeak@sopuli.xyz 6 hours ago
In a nutshell, words that look the same / similar but with different meanings in their respective languages, making it pretty confusing.
slazer2au@lemmy.world 15 hours ago
It depends honestly.
Key words like If, Match, Else, From, This ,etc will be in English, but variable names can be in any Unicode language as the var name gets converted to machine code after compilation.
yesman@lemmy.world 14 hours ago
Also professional air traffic control and commercial aviation radio communication are in English, worldwide.
litchralee@sh.itjust.works 8 hours ago
For handling international traffic under ICAO rules, ATC is indeed supposed to be done in English.
But if we take a look at some of the terminology in aviation, the French words cannot be ignored. Mayday and pan-pan are from the French venez m’aider and panne.
When radio silence is required, a station might command “SEE-LONCE” but this comes from the French word for silence. Though I think this is a rarity in aviation.
neidu3@sh.itjust.works 14 hours ago
Maritime radio has a lot of French in it
cally@piefed.blahaj.zone 8 hours ago
Online: everything in English for me, except for some explanations sometimes but that’s just at random as I’m a hobbyist/amateur.
Offline (a course I did): explanations in Portuguese (Brazil), we learned Portugol (programming language that uses Portuguese keywords) as an introduction then switched to C.
schnurrito@discuss.tchncs.de 10 hours ago
Most popular programming languages have English-language keywords and that can’t be changed, so we certainly have to learn those.
How we learn to name symbols (variable/function names), that obviously depends on the programming course. But most real-world code has most symbols written in English with the possible exception of business-specific terminology that the business doesn’t use in English. The same is true of comments.
Siegfried@lemmy.world 10 hours ago
The real deal isn’t the language barrier but the keyboard layout. Most special characters usually used for coding are just perfectly at hand when using the US layout.
At one point i started buying US keyboards and use US-int layout, which i find easier to use than ES and latam.
Treczoks@lemmy.world 7 hours ago
About every programming language is based on English. Names for functions, objects, variables are based on personal, project, or company preferences. In reality you’ll find these only in two languages as far as I’ve seen in the last decades: either English or Chinese. I’ve seen German and, sadly, French, but they are outliers.
gandalf_der_13te@feddit.org 14 hours ago
i’ve seen both. there is german program code with german variable names and german comments. yeah, it sounds about as strange as it is.
// diese variable beschreibt den luftzug an den messrohren var trötflöte = lese_zahl_aus(datenbank);
blackbeans@lemmy.zip 11 hours ago
In my experience it’s more common in industrial (plc) and embedded software. Where people don’t have to work in large teams.
stsquad@lemmy.ml 13 hours ago
It’s super common if it’s any sort of open source project because the collaborators can be anywhere and English is a good baseline.
IIRC one of the big tasks when Star Office became Open Office (later Libre Office) was translating a bunch of the German comments to make the code more accessible.
I’m sure I’ve seen some majority french code bases as well. There are certainly academic hypervisors out of China which have comments in Chinese kanji.
CannedYeet@lemmy.world 6 hours ago
daggermoon@piefed.world 10 hours ago
Everyone should code in Armenian. Why? Because it would be funny.
vegafjord@slrpnk.net 9 hours ago
I quit my degree in computer science in 2018 after studying for two years, but I remember that it was a big focus on using norwegian for variable names.
devaly@ani.social 15 hours ago
I learned English before learning Programming, but there are localized programming languages targetting learning like Portugol pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portugol
BigDanishGuy@sh.itjust.works 13 hours ago
I teach my students to just code in English from the start. Not all languages/compilers/linkers/whatever handles the Danish characters ‘æ’, ‘ø’, and ‘å’ all that predictably, most companies will require you to use English for international collaboration, and besides most documentation is in English anyway.
jol@discuss.tchncs.de 13 hours ago
A mix. In uni we learned algorithms in pseudo code and that was always in native language. Actual coding was typically English, but older professors often did it in their language.
maxihuenu@lemmy.ml 12 hours ago
Sadly, in the horrible english language
Zwuzelmaus@feddit.org 14 hours ago
Do non-English speakers learn to code in English
Why should they?
Code is programming language, not natural language. If they have already learned some natural English, then maybe it seems practical. Otherwise, no reason to try that.
Skullgrid@lemmy.world 14 hours ago
Well, unless you specifically take steps to change how types and built in functions are called, you’re going to be writing “string” “for” and “if”
ThirdConsul@lemmy.zip 10 hours ago
Doesn’t matter. Could be any symbols instead. The same as math symbols.
Zwuzelmaus@feddit.org 14 hours ago
“string” “for” and “if”
That’s the part that the experts call “programming language”
ndupont@lemmy.blahaj.zone 13 hours ago
You’ll be surprised to learn that WinDEV can be programmed in a ton of diferent languages. I mean the instruction set and all. It feels dirty to read code written in french, and that’s my mother tongue. What a shit show. Only ‘logo’ for kids in primary school makes sense to have in the their native language.
buran@lemmy.today 2 hours ago
I’m a native Spanish speaker, it depends on the language and the person.
Spanish has very few diacritics, so it’s quite understandable in ASCII (áéíóúüñ). But I guess it would be a lot harder in other languages like Czech or Vietnamese.
When I program for myself or in public repos, I tend to code everything in English, but when I have to do projects with classmates at my university, I usually do it in Spanish because they are not great at English.