Many people in Latin America or Spain can write great code, but they are not that fluent in English. There was nothing similar before. And among 400 million people that speak Spanish, there are many, many good hackers.
I don't think that applies in this case, I'm from Costa Rica but learned english very young (ironically, in Scotland) and I've seen how limiting it can be for non english speakers, most tutorials, documentation, books and just resources in general are either not available in spanish or not as rich; it doesn't help that most programmer jobs are for US based companies. A friend sometimes shares gnu/linux news from some a latin-american or spanish site and I kinda feel sad when it's something I read a week ago in HN.
Well, to be honest - MeFi and BoingBoing also get the good stuff a few days after HNN. And most programming jobs aren't in Indiana, either, so English alone isn't enough.
I grant you your point, of course: It's fair enough to say that lack of English is a disadvantage - but I don't think the answer is to say there shouldn't be a more vibrant Spanish-language community than there has been.
There are also good hackers in Europe, and they all speak various languages, but they all learned English at some point in their life. And I guess this is an advantage, because they can collaborate/interact with other tech people, especially from US/Canada.
I'm not against a spanish HN or any other website in a mother tongue, but wouldn't be better for everyone if Latin American Hackers would become fluent in English? Maybe then US companies could open up offices in Latin America, hire the best programmers, pay maybe less than what we pay now, etc.
I am not arguing the utility of having a Spanish HN nor I want to criticize the utility of knowing English. But for some Spanish /Latin American Hackers time is also a constrain and they might not have time to be fluent at a foreign language. Read it, understand it... sure, but fluently writing/talking requires time.
I have been lucky to be born in a region with 2 official languages and more lucky to have a 3rd language in my family and being able to learn English and French in school. But... this is not normal in the rest of Europe.
In any case, I am not sure if I have understood correctly your last sentence. Did you mean "pay maybe more"? I am not sure of what you are implying...
Less than what companies have to pay US programmers could still be far above average for a programming job in those countries, depending on cost of living and labor market differences. Basically, he's saying it's a win for everyone involved.
I suppose that would be more convenient for English speakers, sure. Are you honestly advocating that non-English speakers learn fluent English so they can be paid less than native English speakers?
No, he argues that they learn English so that they get paid more than they are being paid now.
Technically we're talking about the same amount of money (more than they are paid now, less than a programmer in Silicon Valley) but framing does matter.
I think the point of having Noticias Hacker is that maybe it's not the highest possible aspiration to learn somebody else's language so they can colonize you.
[Note: I can't think of a less argumentative way to express that without being a lot less succinct. It's not meant as a flame, really.]
Addendum on rereading, because I think it matters: For a Pole to learn English to open up career opportunities has a whole lot less historical baggage connected with it than for a Latin American to do so, and this is over and above the fact that there are ten times as many speakers of Spanish as speakers of Polish.
> wouldn't be better for everyone if Latin American Hackers would become fluent in English?
It would also be better for everyone if humanity as a whole switched to renewable energy sources next year. Unfortunately there's the small matter of feasibility. Learning a language is not trivial for everyone.
>"It would also be better for everyone if humanity as a whole switched to renewable energy sources next year."
I doubt that. The cost would be devastating. With current renewable energy technologies, we'd only generate a fraction of the power we use even after we pave the wilderness with windmills.