[kybernetyk]

>I've often wondered if the Anglocentrism of programming is a barrier to learning in other parts of the world.

From personal experience: no. I was 7 or 8 when I started learning BASIC and I didn't speak a word of English at the time. FOR, IF, GOTO, etc. were just abstract words for me. Things of their own that resulted in specific behavior. I didn't really grasp the "real world" meaning behind them until I started learning English later.

[kazinator]

I started BASIC at age 11, only a short time after being immersed in an English speaking culture so it was simultaneous. The BASIC words did mean something in English, but it was easy.

I thought it was absolutely terrific how the programming language was nearly grammatical, because English words didn't require inflecting. For instance PRINT is both the imperfective dictionary form of a verb, and an imperative. This means that programming can use English verbs in their dictionary form (easy to look up!) and yet these uses nicely read as imperatives: print this, update that, etc. The target nouns of an imperative have the same form as datives. The "foo" doesn't change between "here is variable foo" and "add 3 to foo".

I thought, man, English is working great for programming, this is so easy!

[nkrisc]

I never thought of that, but that's a really cool point. Then again I'm a native English speaker so I never really had to think about it.

[ggambetta]

Same here... started learning BASIC way before I learned English, and arguably at the same time I was learning my native language. Was never a problem, in fact it probably helped me learn English.