
The Language of Programming: Learning to Code as a Non-English Speaker - temochka
https://temochka.com/blog/posts/2017/06/28/the-language-of-programming.html
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bvanderveen
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.

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temochka
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.

