Ask HN: Do you have to be fluent in English to be a Programmer?

4 points by IamZeroBalance 5 years ago | 10 comments

Someone said to me - "If you don't know English, you're not a programmer." Because I am not a native English speaker. I was offended by this message. Although I take classes and reading English books to make it better.

But do you have to be fluent in English to be able to compete with programmers around the globe and be successful?

gostsamo 5 years ago |

No, you don't have to, but it definitely helps. If there is no documentation and knowledge sharing in your own language, then you will be constrained to the most basic level of programing. You can't find, invent, or deduce everything that thousands others have created and deployed for decades. Countries like Russia and China have big enough communities that they can maintain knowledge base that is sufficiently large to serve most of the needs of their communities, but even then knowing english helps to not reinvent the wheel at any single step.

Normille 5 years ago |

Important to note there are two 'flavours' [with a fecking U!] of English. So, even if you're a native English speaker, it can be almost as frustrating, as most programming languages are written in US English. So, if you're the kind of person who takes a pride in your spelling and grammar, there's the constant thorn in the brain of having to deliberately spell words wrongly all the time, such as needing to write:

color instead of colour

center --------> centre

math ----------> maths

And then these new-fangled languages [like Crystal] come along and add to the misery with their:

fiber ---------> fibre

GianFabien 5 years ago | |

With non USA keyboards some punctuation characters are much harder to type or even non-existent.

Normille 5 years ago | | |

One thing I really like about Apple keyboards is that they make it really easy to type a lot of accented letters and characters, using just the ALT key.

Usually [with UK layout anyway] ALT+E followed by the vowel you need will give you an accent on that vowel; acute on E, umlaut on O and U, etc.

I use Irish layout which is the same as UK but has the additional advantage [for the languages I need to type] that I can type acute accented vowels with just ALT+vowel: áéíóú ÁÉÍÓÚ Thus saving an extra keystroke. Some other handy ones:

ALT + s gives you German ß

ALT + n followed by another n gives you Spanish ñ

ALT + c followed by another c gives you French ç

ALT + ! gives you Spanish ¡

[oddly, on my keyboard ALT + ? doesn't give the Spanish upside down question mark, but a division sign]

ALT + g gives you copyright symbol ©

ALT + r gives you registered trademark symbol ®

ALT + k gives you a degrees symbol ˚

ALT + t gives you square root symbol √

ALT + y gives you a Yen [?] symbol ¥

ALT + f gives you a florin symbol ƒ

ALT + h gives you a mu symbol µ

ALT + l gives you pi π

etc. etc.

jfengel 5 years ago | | |

That's interesting. Can you give some examples?

bloak 5 years ago |

I'd say "no", or at least "not particularly". Obviously there are careers that require even less knowledge of English, for example in music (I knew someone who chose to study music specifically because they didn't know which country they might end up in), but many careers require more knowledge of English than programming, so if you don't like or are not good at (human) languages then programming is not a bad choice, I think.

GianFabien 5 years ago |

That was a very nasty comment. Whoever said it to you, probably wasn't multilingual.

I have worked on a large system for a multi-national drug manufacturer. Some modules were written by Spanish speakers, others by Germans, a few by French and about half by English speakers. It worked well. The only real problem was that variables and function names were all in their respective native languages. At least the module names were all in English (well sort of). I ended up maintaining it because I spoke all those languages (badly) and was willing to use various dictionaries. It was an experience!

In my experience the vast majority of books and internet resources are in English as are the keywords in most programming languages. If you can read English at high school level you should be Ok.

Since programming relies on teamwork, you need to speak the local language well wherever you live and work.

nowherebeen 5 years ago |

I was told I need to be good a math to be a programmer. Turns out they were totally wrong. Don’t listen to people that say you need x to be y. Most of the time, it’s just someone’s bias opinion.

sloaken 5 years ago | |

The amount and type of math skills needed depend on which type of programming you are doing. I suspect they should have said you need to be able to think logically. And if you think logically you are assumed to be good at math.

Myself I think doing proofs in geometry class was the best preparation for being a developer. Most of the people whom I have known, and whom I believed were very good or excellent developers loved their geometry class. That is not proof, just an observation.

Really almost any profession you should (not need) to be able to read, write and do arithmetic. Public speaking is useful too.

sloaken 5 years ago |

No you do not have to be fluent. Reading English is more important than writing English, writing English s more important than speaking English.

You will most likely need to read some technical information in English.

You will probably need to write a question in English to solicit help.

You might find a job working with others who do not speak your language.

Having said that, I have seen where English is considered a 'Common' language. The tourism industry seems to have this requirement.

I know a couple, one person is German and the other is French. They live in France. Neither spoke (past tense as they do more so now) the other language. At a party someone asked how they communicated with each other. "English" of course, the common language. The German is able to work in France because of her ability to speak English enables her to communicate with co-workers.