The Language of Programming: Learning to Code as a Non-English Speaker(temochka.com)

8 pointsby temochkavor 9 Jahren2 comments

The Language of Programming: Learning to Code as a Non-English Speaker

https://temochka.com/blog/posts/2017/06/28/the-language-of-programming.html

2 comments

Interesting piece. I've often acknowledged to myself how much being a native English speakers has given me a leg up in my programming career. I can scarcely imagine how difficult it would have been for me to learn the compute stack on my own if I was also trying to learn e.g., Russian simultaneously.

The author focusses on programming languages, but the whole compute ecosystem is undoubtedly a challenge. Consider UNIX idioms like `stdin` "/etc" "/bin" `tail` `mv` etc. Consider the entire CLI surface area of `git`.

One of the refrains around my shop is "NO WHIMSY". I strongly object to the introduction of kooky ontologies (e.g., Chef's 'cookbook', 'recipe', 'knife', brew "tap", "cellar" etc). Cute names are a waste of time to think up, pollute the concept space, are usually just stand-ins for more names with a longer and wider usage history, and ultimately are the groundwork for the kind of insular, almost ideological thinking that can make for sprawling, ad-hoc, complex, and redundant system surface area.

temochkavor 9 Jahren

I’m curious to hear about how programming is taught in other non-English speaking countries, and whether anybody shares my concern about the difficulty of modifying names in many programming environments being a threat to productivity and creativity.