[Veratyr]

While I do like English, the way you said 'your particular language' seemed a little off to me.

I'm no expert but that sample you gave me looks like Simplified Chinese, which should be readable by about 1.2 billion people[0]. There is no solid data on how widespread English is yet but I think if 1/6th of the earth speaks a language which is also an official language of the United Nations, programmers should be able to use it without criticism.

It might be an unpopular view on a site seemingly populated mostly by Americans but there's a big world out there and not everyone is at a comfortable level of English proficiency.

I know it's disappointing not to be able to contribute but I also think it's wrong to expect everyone who wants to build an open source project to restrict their communications and comments to English, especially when most of the world's population doesn't speak it.

Plus, 30% of developers are from the Asia/Pacific Region, comparable to developers in the Americas[1]. Familiarity with Chinese is going to be comparable to familiarity with English.

Just to add a little more, Go specifically may very well be more popular in China than it is in the English speaking countries[2].

[0] http://www.ethnologue.com/statistics/size [1] http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/european-technology/there-a... [2] http://herman.asia/why-is-go-popular-in-china

[pritambaral]

You assume all developers from Asia/Pacific are familiar with Chinese. Speaking as one of 1.2 billion Indians, we are not familiar with Chinese, despite being firmly in Asia/Pacific. I doubt the Japanese, Koreans, Malayasians or Filipino are familiar with Chinese either. (familiar = to the point of being able to read it)

Just because a language is accepted at the UN doesn't mean everyone should be familiar with it. Even the UN needs translators for Arabic, Spanish, Russian, French and Chinese; all official languages. (Aside: the UN Secretariat uses only English and French).

Being a UN accepted language shouldn't be a criterion for programming, being popular among developers should be. And anyone writing any piece of code in any human language, be it English or Chinese, should know that by making that choice, they are also limiting the set of understanding eyes that can be laid on their code.

[the_solution]

You're missing the point comletely.

There needs to be a common, agreed on ("standard") intercommunication language for exchange of knowledge to happen. For computer science related things, programming in particular, this is english. This happened historically because a lot of the development took place in the US and it is also a good choice, because english is easy to learn (I'm no native speaker btw.). Had computers been developed mainly in china I would very likely write to you in chinese at this moment (which would be a bad choice because it is badly suited as a global intercommunication language).

But they weren't and english is the lowest common denominator everyone doing CS is required to know. Hell, anything on the internet. If you deviate from this than you hinder the free exchange of knowledge and ideas which is bad.

Do not use any language other than english in public code. It is a bad idea because it needlessly alienates the larger part of mankind. It's not about "having it my way" or having others cater to my needs. I'm not advocating it because it is the easier choice for me, but because it is the better choice in the big picture.

[Dewie]

> , because english is easy to learn (I'm no native speaker btw.).

OK, I guess your experience as a non-native speaker validates that claim?

I don't see how the claim "English is easy to learn" is obvious on an international level.

> I'm not advocating it because it is the easier choice for me,

But it also is an easier choice for me. Doesn't matter if you're a native speaker or not, since you're obviously comfortable with it.

(On this topic I also see a lot of "I wish everyone would just write in English/speak English in these contexts, and I'm not even a native speaker!", implying that they're an unbiased party. No, if you have a good command of the language, you're about as biased as any native speaker on this debate, really.)

[the_solution]

Good point. What I was trying to convey is that it happened the other way round. I know english well because it is the language CS takes place in. Had it been chinese, I had learned chinese. Had it been elvish, I had learned elvish.