On Tue, 20 Jul 1999 09:22:29 -0700, Yung-Fong Tang wrote:
[...]
>2. If you can tell me a good reason why peopl in China, Korea, Rssian, and
>Japan need to learn English first before they learn C++ them probably I
>can tell you why ?
Good Reason #1: Information Techology is a very fast business. To be
up to date, one have to know English (at least passively to read
documentation). Often I can't wait until a German translation of a
good book becomes available.
Good Reason #2: English allows us to talk to each other on this
mailing list. Fortunately, English is not the hardest language to
learn.
>> UCNs are a good idea, e.g. in string literals, regular expression,
>> resource files, config files and so on. But, IMHO, it's a very stupid
>> idea to use Unicode characters in identifiers. I will never use them
>> and I will forbid the programmers in my company to use them
>> (fortunately I can do that). We use only English based identifiers.
>
>That is becuase all your colleague use English.
Only because I force them to do ;-) Otherwise they would use German
(or even worse: "Germish"), like I did once.
>But that is not true for
>software project which ONLY doing business in one region and won't scale
>for other languages, with no one not knowing the languages ever need to
>read the code, there are no reason they should not use identify in thier
>language.
Okay, maybe I misjudged the whole source code thing. But see above for
the reason why to know English in IT business.
>If there are any chance that
>1. Non native language speaker may read the code in the life time of the
>software
>2. Need to use any software facility such as Operating System, Library,
>utilities created from people not read/write that language.
>
>If any of the above are true- then only use "common language" in the id is
>a good practice. Notice I use "Common Language" , not English here. As
>Today, English is the "common language" in the world so definitely it is
>English. However, this statement is not true in 10th centry, neither
>necessary true statement in 21th centry or 22th centry. Remember, English
>is not even the "common language" in California during 16th centry,
>neither the "common language" in south of USA during 18th centry. Who know
>what language will be the "common language" 100 year from now, may be
>Klingon, right ?
I think we need a common language and that is English.
There are only two alternatives:
1) I have to learn *a lot* of languages.
2) I have a translator like in Star Trek or a Babel Fish. But
unfortunately neither the Star Trek technology nor a lifeform like a
Babel Fish exist in reality.
-- Torsten Mohrin Sharmahd Computing GmbH, Hannover, Germany Phone: +49-511-13780, Fax: +49-511-13450 http://www.sharmahd.com, mohrin@sharmahd.com
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