All Programmers are English
Not American. Not British.
You know what I am saying if you’ve read Jeff Atwood’s The Ugly American Programmer
As a programmer from China, I’m humble and excited to see so many comments concerning Chinese on that post. I’m also amazed to see a Chinese clone of Stack Overflow, which I think should be applauded and encouraged. ^(Do you think so, Jeff?)$
IMO, there is a strong correlation between English mastery and programming competence among Chinese programmers.
It’s no to say that all good Chinese programmers always prefer English in tech areas, but that they all have the ability to some extent to read, write, and talk (the three abilities in descending order) tech things, in English.
And I dare say that the top 5% of Chinese programmers do prefer English docs over translated ones, which is easy to understand. The top programmers are clever enough to grasp English well enough, so well that they are no worse interpreters than the translators of the docs, at least to themselves. In fact, reading is just first half of translating, and of course easier to be done well.
Translation is not a direct mapping or table-looking-up, but is a more sophisticated indirect process. Suppose I, a Chinese, am reading a paragraph of English text. The original language, English, is the input, the target language, Chinese, is the output, and I am the processor. I grab the input, and the English workshop of my language center crunches out the meanings, save them in some temp areas of my brain, during which the Chinese workshop may or may not be involved. By then, I understand the text, and the reading is done. Suppose now I am translating the text. I pick up the meanings produced in the first phase, and throw them to the Chinese workshop which organizes Chinese sentences around the meanings. By then, I can give out the output, and the translating is done. You see, translating is composed of two phases, understanding and reorganizing. The reorganizing part is much more difficult, since we all have those moments that even though we sense it, we are just not able to express it (只可意会，不可言传). Luckily, reading only involves the first part.
However, I believe the top Chinese programmers still stick to Chinese in oral communication, though with quite a lot sprinkles of English words. They talk in Chinese because they speak it everyday. When one can express himself better in his mother tongue, why should he laboriously lisp in English? Just to practice or show off (装13)? They mix in English words because maybe those words have no good correspondence in Chinese, or are just felt more natural than their Chinese counterparts, or only because the speakers have never thought of the Chinese way of saying them, since they learn them from English docs.
I’m sorry if some Chinese programmers feel I’m an arrogant ass or 崇洋媚外 or even both, when I say top programmers likes English docs. I’m not saying that one can not be a top programmer without mastering English, but I do believe it is much harder since one is severely handicapped when the dominance of English in IT resource is status quo. After all, it is Information Technology we are talking about. What do you think it means to an IT engineer when his information is delayed or even tampered?
Let’s face it. To us Chinese programmers, there is a gap along the English-Competence axis, splitting us into two groups. There is a higher probability to be top programmers in the Good-At-English group than in the Poor-In-English group. If you are a good programmer with great potential squatting in the latter, please help us to move yourself to the former, then China will have a slightly better chance to lead in IT industry for so many of you with a higher probability to exploit your programming potential. But it is just probability, you can be masculine and bet against it. I hope you not.
I’ve been planning to do something to help fill the gap from the very beginning of this blog. So I’ve intentionally writing Chinese and English posts alternatively. A better and more ambitious way is to write some of them in both Chinese and English, so those not so good at English can try to read the English version first, and refer to the Chinese version occasionally when unsure. I have the faith that this format of bilingual posting is more approachable for Chinese programmers intent on improving English, if only I have the willpower to do so and the necessary stuff to entice those programmers. I will try.
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