For Latin-based language speakers like Spanish, Italian, or French, learning programming in English might not be a huge hurdle. But for people whose native languages use completely different scripts (Chinese, Arabic, Sinhala, etc.), the challenge is much greater.
You mentioned that you rarely search for programming-related content in Spanish. Do you think that’s because English is simply better suited for programming, or is it more about the lack of high-quality programming resources in Spanish?
If programming had built-in support for multiple scripts while keeping a universal structure, do you think more people would use resources in their native language?
Even if I can learn programming concepts in spanish or any other language, I will need to use english to communicate with my peers. Building a jargon for concepts that I cannot communicate is a lost of time. No one will understand me (maybe not even other spanish speakers) if I refer to a stack as a "pila". So yes, even with high quality content in other languagues, I stil be refering to english version.
That said, if in the future that status quo changes, and chinese dominate the programming world...well, then I'll be reading in chinese (and I will have a hard time doing so)
What do you think is a more realistic solution? Should we focus on improving translations for documentation and learning materials, or is there a way to make programming itself less dependent on a single language?
The universe gave us AI which translates pretty well (and soon to be perfect). There was no one seriously looking to address this, it was just magically addressed when these LLMs showed up.
Thanks for sharing this! The idea of removing text from programming languages is really interesting, especially for making coding more accessible to people with different language backgrounds.
The paper you linked explores text-free programming through visual programming tools, which is one possible solution. But what do you think about making existing text-based languages, like Python or JavaScript, script-agnostic instead of moving entirely to visual coding?
Would love to hear your thoughts on whether a hybrid approach — where code can be written in any script but still remains text-based — could work.
That’s amazing! I have visited certain parts of the world where the access to resources are minimal in terms of learning English. I don't know the specifics of your story/background but especially when the native language doesn't involve the Latin alphabet at all, the learning curve is steeper. A fluent English speaker can begin coding immediately, while a non-English speaker has to learn two languages at once.
Even if basic materials exist in other languages, most advanced documentation, debugging tools, and libraries remain in English. Do you think that creates a significant disadvantage for non-English speakers?
Well, in my experience lack of English was more of a small bump rather than having to learn a whole new language. The number of keywords used was fairly limited (if, for, while, begin, end, goto, etc) and not that difficult to memorize. I certainly didn't come out of it with some newfound understanding of English language. It did help that English (and Latin alphabet) is so pervasive in the society that words are easy to sound out even without knowing the particulars. If programming in Hindi or Mandarin was the standard, a lot of us would be out of luck :)
I do agree with your last point - majority of documentation is indeed in English. I learned programming before Internet, with little access to books (they existed, but were hard to find), and mostly relied on translated help files. Growing up these days, I'd definitely be soaking up English to be able to navigate all the available information - feels like a fair trade-off! I do think it's convenient that there's a lingua franca, so to speak, in software dev - there's enough variation in programming languages that it's nice not to have to deal with additional fracturing along spoken language lines.
I love the idea of a universal intermediate language (IL) with region-specific front-ends—that could be a great way to make programming more accessible without fragmenting the ecosystem.
But with AI handling more code generation, how important will it be for people to truly understand the underlying code? Do you think AI will make coding more of a black box, or will there always be value in knowing how things work under the hood?
Music is a great comparison—eastern music notation exists in native scripts, and western pieces can be translated into it. Could programming work the same way, where the structure remains universal, but the notation adapts to different languages?
TIL - I did not know about eastern music notation. (Thanks!)
When I was young I had a vision of future programming as people in front of screens moving colorful shapes and forms (not talking visual programming here) to make 'harmonious' forms. :) The general idea being that (imo) AI is a misnomer and there is something 'special' about human intelligence. So that vision, when I tried to interpret it later, seemed to map out to something along the lines of 'aesthetic choices' on a meta-level. That is the 'thinking' machine 'state' was represented as images to humans and they made aesthetic choices, with man and machine each doing what they excel at.
But back to present reality, there is little doubt that over reliance on these tools will cause skill atrophy and at some point there will be a knowledge and comprehension disconnect between the operator of the tool and the artifacts created by it. This is likely already true for many beginners who are cranking out software using LLMs, but the overall field hasn't yet experienced it since the experienced software engineers already know and understand the code being generated; they are just using it to amplify their output. But they (imo) gained that knowledge due to years of hands on practice.
ASCII and a US keyboard do keep things simple. But given that modern systems already support Unicode everywhere (from websites to filenames), do you think the complexity argument still holds today?
Do you think we’ll always be stuck in this cycle, or is it possible to design programming languages that aren’t tied to any one language, preventing this issue in the future?
But do you think they failed because they were localized per country, rather than designed for global compatibility from the start?
Silent conversions could definitely be messy, but what if there were a standardized system that allowed programming in any script while keeping everything interoperable? Could that avoid the pitfalls of past localized languages?
English is the global standard now, and that’s shaped programming as well. But what happens if, in the future, another language (like Hindi or Mandarin) becomes dominant? Would the programming world have to shift again?
If programming were script-agnostic from the start, we wouldn’t have to constantly adapt to shifting global languages. Instead of relying on English or any single language, shouldn’t we explore ways to make programming more accessible to all scripts from the ground up?
I’m curious—do you think learning English is equally easy for everyone? Many programmers come from regions where English education is either poor or expensive. If someone is highly logical but struggles with English, should that be a barrier to learning how to code? Also what was your level/accessibility to education of English before you learned it? Did you start from scratch? Did you know a language that shared a root language with English?
I literally learned English reading the only computer books that were available at the time, mid 80s. That was before I had a single English class in school - in fact I already knew English pretty well by the time I started studying English on 7th grade. I come from Finland and the Finnish language has absolutely nothing to do with any other language (except Estonian), no words are even remotely similar to English.
Also I totally suck at learning languages. I've tried to learn Swedish, nope, German, nope, Spanish/Portuguese, also nope.
Ja jos mielestäsi suomenkieli liittyy johonkin muuhun kieleen niin ihan vapaasti voit ajatella niin. Viime viikonloppua yritin opettaa muutamia suomenkielen sanoja ja taivutusmuotoja kielenopettajalle joka jaksoi kuunnella noi puoli tuntia ja totesi etta "mahdotonta oppia koska mitään referenssiä muihin kieliin ei ole".
That’s impressive. But do you think your experience is typical or more of an exception?
What if coding was built from the ground up to be script-agnostic—where people didn’t need to 'learn English on the side' at all?
If a Finnish speaker could code in Finnish while collaborating with a Japanese speaker coding in Japanese — and the system translated everything seamlessly — do you think that would increase access to programming without fragmenting the codebase?
The Finnish version of Excel used to have all of the functions translated to Finnish (in late 90s when I was doing Excel for living). It was literally impossible to do anything with it as none of the documentation knew about the translated functions and it was very hard to self-translate the functions (as in there was mostly no logic in the Finnish function names thanks to the way Finnish language works).
What was supposedly done in good faith to make it easier for non-English speaking Finns to do Excel functions ended up making it impossible for everyone. If you didn't know Excel then =IF() was just as cryptic as =JOS() and if you did know Excel then you couldn't figure out why =IF() didn't work. At least .xls files were compatible because apparently functions were saved as opcodes and not as strings.
I haven't used non-English software since so no idea if Finnish Excel still has translated fuctions. Hope not.
You mentioned that you rarely search for programming-related content in Spanish. Do you think that’s because English is simply better suited for programming, or is it more about the lack of high-quality programming resources in Spanish?
If programming had built-in support for multiple scripts while keeping a universal structure, do you think more people would use resources in their native language?