
How did science come to speak only English - Schiphol
https://aeon.co/essays/how-did-science-come-to-speak-only-english
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gwern
> This point is much easier to sustain if the speaker grew up speaking
> English, but the majority of scientists working today are actually not
> native English speakers. When you consider the time spent by them on
> language-learning, the English-language conquest is not more efficient than
> polyglot science – it is just differently inefficient. There’s still a lot
> of language‑learning and translation going on, it’s just not happening in
> the United Kingdom, or Australia, or the United States. The bump under the
> rug has been moved, not smoothed out.

That's not true, and this is why you see hub-and-spoke models everywhere. Even
if no one spoke the language natively (like, oh say, Latin?), it would still
be efficient to have a single standard language so you only have to learn 1
rather than _n_. In the polyglot scenario, you still have to learn (at least)
another language, but now each additional language only unlocks 1/n% instead
of 'all of it'...

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billylo
If you were to choose a "lingua franca" for software developers, what should
it be?

Yes, each programming language has its own strengths and weaknesses, but I do
look forward to the days when I don't need to learn 5 different sets of string
manipulation APIs or math functions.

Why hasn't this happened?

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WarChortle18
It will never happen. Natural language is something that evolved over time,
99% of people on the planet don't have an opinion on the language they speak,
they just speak it.

Programmers are very opinionated and sometimes for good reason. If I am a Web
Dev I don't want to use C++ for my back end, that would be a nightmare. Just
like if I am working on a major Triple-A game, I wouldn't want to write it in
python.

