codinghorror.com - One of the most wonderful things about the internet is that you can pretend the world is flat. Whatever country you live in, whatever language you speak, you have the same access to the accumulated knowledge of the world as every other citizen of the planet Earth. And a growing percentage of that knowledge can and should be available in your native language.
But I believe the rules are different for programmers. So much so that I'm going to ask the unthinkable: shouldn't every software developer understand English?
A wildly disproportionate amount of programming information is available in English. The overwhelming majority of programming languages use English keywords. By any metric you can possibly measure, English is the lingua franca of programming.
Now, In terms of cultural literacy and travel, presuming that everyone should speak English is a totally unacceptable attitude, the epitome of the ugly american.
Read More