How does coding work in countries that don't speak English? Do coders still use English or other languages for coding?

Question

How do people from non-english speaking countries code? For example, will someone in Spain write code using phrases like "stylesheet", "bold", etc? What about languages that use characters, such as Chinese?

Answer 1

All of them write code as the language specified. Comments can be in non-English, the rest is up to the language. Most widely-used and popular programming languages use English.

Programming languages are pretty logical and unambiguous. A statement has only one meaning, unlike natural languages where you can diss someone and people could interpret it as a compliment. It won't hurt much learning a few keywords.

Answer 2

Keywords must be in English. Comments can usually be in other languages. And yes, that means you pretty much have to learn English to be a programmer.

There is a wikipedia page about non-English-based programming languages. Most of them are failed attempts. Perhaps this will change one day.

Answer 3

As a non-native speaker, I write all code in English, including comments.

Answer 4

Arthur
1) In 21 years, I've never met a programmer who knows no English.
2) You've confirmed that knowing English is an advantage. This means that, although someone may not know much English now, they are likely to go beyond the basics because it is a necessary skill.
3) My claim was that people 'basically' need to know English and by saying that the people you know who can program know basic English, you validate my argument.

Answer 5

Division by Zero I was a progammer without knowing english...

Answer 6

I have been asking myself the same questio. I think the use of english by most or all programming languages is as a result of most programming language developers hail from the english speaking countries especially the US.

Answer 7

dzeff kiptoo programming languages are in English 'cause they descended/evolved from some of the very first languages - which are all in English (Fortran, COBOL, Pascal, etc.). Stroustrup is Danish, Linus is Finnish, Niklaus Wirth is Swiss, ... but what they created are in English because it's more efficient improving the existing logic and performance than reinventing the whole wheel.

Answer 8

Arthur
Yet, now you know English. I wonder why...

Answer 9

Hi Adeleke Ife,
Everything is in English anyway. If you want to get good salary you must speak English. All latest docs are in English. Those who do not speak English should look for a projects on local market which is less paid. Speaking of comments and variables, yes, if it is less-paid-local-project, you can create variables and comments in local language, that is bad practise but nobody cares. So.. learning English is the very first task, this is what I usually advise to those who ask me how to become programmer.

Answer 10

to write a program we don't to need to know whole English language. in a programming language there is some fixed keywords so it's not difficult to use them in code. practice make it's easy.

non English Programmer face problem while learning new things new language. beacause all content is not available in own language. but now all video courses available in mother tongue on YouTube.

#i am a non English Programer.
#i didn't know English very well
#sorry for errors

Answer 11

Works normally, the commands stills the same... -( '-')-

Answer 12

Division by Zero Because i want a good grade for my school's tests...

Answer 13

Division by Zero I know a lot of people who only know the basic of english and are good at programming

Answer 14

Division by Zero Maybee because you live in Germany

Its a advantage but its not necessary...

Answer 15

Arthur in programming fields, English is compulsory. Docs of every languages, libaries and frameworks come in English, reporting and filing bugs of these things are also English. It's more visible when you work in large scale projects.

Answer 16

Don't have instructions in french to understand the informatics languages. What a shame!