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.
Do non-English speakers learn to code in English, or in their native language?
Submitted 2 weeks ago by TheImpressiveX@lemmy.today to [deleted]
Comments
yesman@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Also professional air traffic control and commercial aviation radio communication are in English, worldwide.
neidu3@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
Maritime radio has a lot of French in it
litchralee@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks 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.
ILikeTraaaains@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
I wrote variable names and comments in Spanish when I started as my English level back then was very low.
Once my English improved and started to use English documentation and tutorials I just switched to write in English.
In my previous job I worked at software consultancy, I had coworkers who wrote code in Spanish but it wasn’t the norm.
Currently I work for an international company, the team is Spanish but we have to write everything in English as it can be shared with teams in other countries and audited by international organisations.
When AI tools were allowed, a lot of people use them in Spanish, it generates code with comments in Spanish. I had to reject a lot of PRs from the same guys over an over because everything must be in English.
Flax_vert@feddit.uk 2 weeks ago
I use British English in variables for the word “colour”. It’s actually kind of useful because I can tell when it’s my own variable and when I’m interacting with something else.
gandalf_der_13te@feddit.org 2 weeks 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 2 weeks 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 2 weeks 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.
Danquebec@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
In Chinese, they’re “hanzi”.
Or you can just say “Chinese ideograms”
zerofk@lemmy.zip 2 weeks ago
As a native Dutch speaker, Trötflöte sounds hilarious.
Siegfried@lemmy.world 2 weeks 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.
ILikeTraaaains@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
This, I switched my keyboards to US layout, and since I learned a bit touch typing , having the laptop with ISO es_ES is not of a big deal having the symbols not matching the input layout.
For Mac it is a bit shittier, I don’t get used to the way to introduce the Ñ with its US int.
On Linux, I didn’t managed to set the US int, only US so I don’t have either Ñ nor the possibility to add accents. It might be easy but I didn’t look for it either.
123@programming.dev 2 weeks ago
Not sure if thus is just bazzite with KDE/wayland, but i found today if i hold n i get the option for ñ/ń. Hold i and you get ì/í/etc. Similar to mobile keyboards con phones.
schnurrito@discuss.tchncs.de 2 weeks 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.
sbeak@sopuli.xyz 2 weeks ago
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.
Muffi@programming.dev 2 weeks ago
Never even heard of a programming language in Danish. Even the ones invented by danes are in english.
GojuRyu@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
daggermoon@piefed.world 2 weeks ago
Everyone should code in Armenian. Why? Because it would be funny.
buran@lemmy.today 2 weeks ago
Western Armenian or Eastern Armenian?
daggermoon@piefed.world 2 weeks ago
Idk. I was just talking out of my ass. I don’t know how they are different.
noobdoomguy8658@feddit.org 2 weeks ago
Russian here.
For the most part, it’s all English. Not even romanized Russian in variable names, although that happens sometimes. Comments are mostly in Russian, though. Depending on the company and whether it has to deal with countries where Russian isn’t as widespread, which is not a lot these days, that English can be a little difficult to understand once you start applying English language logic to it as opposed to basically writing Russian poorly translated to English. It’s fine if the variables, classes and method names are short and offer little room for stringing words together, but anything complex poses risk of producing something that will be difficult to read without heavy Russian background and developed English skills (at both comprehending and producing).
However, there is a number of Russian-based programming language. I am fortunate to have never worked with any one of them. One of them is 1C:Enterprise, which is also a sizeable business for automation software and such.
Here’s what it looks like. I can spot a couple of English words there, though. And having learned programming through English and English only, I actually find it more difficult to read, because Russian-native developers still often refer to things in English, even if there’s a word for that same thing in Russian - it’s just that much part of your programming work.
OccasionallyFeralya@lemmy.ml 2 weeks ago
That’s so trippy
reksas@sopuli.xyz 2 weeks ago
much easier to look for guidance for coding in english instead of my native language, syntax makes more sense too. Though personally i would wish more stuff was properly translated into finnish instead of english slowly gnawing at it.
protogen420@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 weeks ago
this, for anythijg technical in pretty much any field, searchig in english is always better
GreenBeard@lemmy.ca 2 weeks ago
That’s probably fair, but I would also worry that anything coded in Finnish would be trying to find a way to kill me for not respecting its personal space.
cally@piefed.blahaj.zone 2 weeks 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.
qaz@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
We always code in English at work. Using our natve language for programming is generally frowned upon.
buran@lemmy.today 2 weeks 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.
myotheraccount@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Many programming languages support Unicode nowadays
Treczoks@lemmy.world 2 weeks 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.
devaly@ani.social 2 weeks ago
I learned English before learning Programming, but there are localized programming languages targetting learning like Portugol pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portugol
AI_toothbrush@lemmy.zip 2 weeks ago
No chance, hungarian has non-ascii characters(ő and ű), digraphs(cs, dz, gy, ly, ny, sz, ty, zs) and a trigraph(dzs). Also generally how the language works is pretty disadvantegous to coding and tech. English has maaaany useful one syllable imperatives(get, click, etc), even with doors irl its often in english whether you pull or push cause hungarian doesnt really have these completely stateless verbs. One thing that did exist back in the day was people coding in german but i only know a single person who still does this.
vegafjord@slrpnk.net 2 weeks 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.
Atomic@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
Coding is all done in the language of the code… if, and, or, for, include, except, etc. It’s not exactly a vast array of words you need to know to be able to code.
Also, I can only speak for Sweden, but I started learning english in third grade. These days they start in kindergarten. Basic stuff, days of the week, 1 through 10. But still.
BrilliantantTurd4361@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
Are you coding in basic? Look at the std libs for any modern language and there is a plethora of words to learn to program effectively.
Atomic@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
The words you need to “know” to code, compared to what you need to know to communicate effectively, are but a promille.
He also specifically said “learn to code”. Beginners often struggle with the concept of a loop, let alone trying to import a bunch of libraries
CannedYeet@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
maxihuenu@lemmy.ml 2 weeks ago
Sadly, in the horrible english language
stsquad@lemmy.ml 2 weeks ago
I don’t begrudge peoples difficulties with English. It has some positives like not needing gendered conjugation for objects and a fairly wide cultural exposure. However it freely steals words from other languages making it a bit of a mongrel. Also the spelling and pronunciation is entirely non-regular so the usual answer to people looking for rules to work these things out is “just know”.
maxihuenu@lemmy.ml 2 weeks ago
I don’t begrudge peoples difficulties with English
it has nice things (like mostly natural languages), but is horrible constructed and very incontinuos like mostly (if not all) natural languages
BigDanishGuy@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks 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 2 weeks 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.
Zwuzelmaus@feddit.org 2 weeks 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 2 weeks 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 2 weeks ago
Doesn’t matter. Could be any symbols instead. The same as math symbols.
Zwuzelmaus@feddit.org 2 weeks ago
“string” “for” and “if”
That’s the part that the experts call “programming language”
ndupont@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 weeks 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.
foudinfo@jlai.lu 2 weeks ago
Came here exactly for this comment…
Windev is probably one of the worst possible programming language out there, look at this !
This is from their official documentation
// Récupère le CA du mois en cours TotalCA est un monétaire = CalculCAMoisEnCours() // Si le CA dépasse l'objectif SI TotalCA >= 1 250 000 ALORS LIB_Objectif= "Objectif dépassé !" LIB_Objectif.Couleur= VertFoncé SINON // Si le CA n'atteint pas l'objectif minimum attendu SI TotalCA <= 200 000 ALORS LIB_Objectif= "Objectif non atteint" LIB_Objectif.Couleur= RougeClair FIN FIN
ndupont@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 weeks ago
Les accents dans le typage de la variable quoi, Kill me!
Vandalismo@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
Only in the very beginning
melsaskca@lemmy.ca 2 weeks ago
I have no clue but at the very least, a programmer names their own variables and, barring any special characters, they could be named in any language.
Kazumara@discuss.tchncs.de 2 weeks ago
Well we learn to code in the programming language that the teacher choses, not in any natural language at all, so neither English nor our native languages.
But all significant programming languages that I know do have reserved control words that are taken from English. Maybe that is the direction of your question?
Then no, mostly we don’t use specifically crafted or preprocessed programming languages just to have control words recognizable as words in our native languages
As for the variable names and natural language comments embedded in the code, that we create, that varies. I’d say as soon as interlingual collaboration or code sharing is a possibility, people will go for English in my experience. And I suspect that people who have gone for English before tend to stick to English even in their private use.
This is also related to learning materials, documentation of language features and libraries being available to the largest degree in English.
I perceive it as easier to stick to English, rather than to code switch between natural language while I program.
Alvaro@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 weeks ago
There have been some interesting attempts to translate languages, but generally at most you would get phoneatically local names using English characters for functions and variables, etc.
bjoern_tantau@swg-empire.de 2 weeks ago
Preferably in English. Nothing is worse than reading code with a mixture of languages. Although false friends can also be quite annoying.
calcopiritus@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
They are annoying even if you write in English. One such example is “library”.
In Spanish, there are two words: “biblioteca” and “librería”.
Library = biblioteca Book shop = librería
When speaking about programming libraries, everyone says “librería” because it’s just easier to translate that way. But it just feels wrong every time.
bjoern_tantau@swg-empire.de 2 weeks ago
A funny one is Pizza Hut. “Hut” means “hat” in German. And since the Pizza Hut logo kind of looks like a hat many Germans believe that they gave it a German name in Germany. So they pronounce it in a German way and if they were to talk to an English speaker they might say Pizza Hat in an effort to translate.
Skullgrid@lemmy.world 2 weeks 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 2 weeks ago
Exacerbate the problem by using your own style that’s not been used before.
treadful@lemmy.zip 2 weeks ago
What does “false friends” mean?
sbeak@sopuli.xyz 2 weeks ago
In a nutshell, words that look the same / similar but with different meanings in their respective languages, making it pretty confusing.
ILikeTraaaains@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
As other stated it is when two words in different languages are similar phonetically/graphically.
They are called false friends because they seem familiar and you expect to mean the same as with other words that are pronounced similarly in two languages and mean the same. False friends not just mean different things but they sometimes can change the phrase in a bad way.
Note: The following examples are with Spanish from Spain, they might be different in other Spanish speaking countries.
In English Alice and Bob had a conversation, in Spanish they had an argument.
Bob is a person who acts with prudence and thinks carefully in English, in Spanish he is a guy where feelings affect him easily.
I had an English teacher who told the same anecdote about false friends and her sister. She was in UK and the batteries for the remote died, so she went to a convenience store and asked if they had them.
The thing is that in Spanish we only use battery (batería) for the ones that are not meant to be replaced regularly, like the car battery, the laptop battery, etc. The replaceable ones (even the rechargeable that take the same shape), are called pilas. So in the anecdote, the sister told the woman at the store very confidently “Do you have piles?” (haemorrhoids, for the ones who doesn’t know).
I don’t know how real the anecdote was, but it fulfilled its purpose to make us aware of these situations ñ.
bjoern_tantau@swg-empire.de 2 weeks ago
Words in two different languages that sound the same but don’t habe the same meaning. Real example from my last work: The German word for “topic” is “Thema”. So our programmers called the database field and variables “theme”.