Hacker News Reader

Not literally required, because languages typically support UTF-8 source files, but it would be difficult to use most popular software libraries without being able to at least read English.

View on HN

Now I want to program in Mandarin and be l33t

https://mariusbancila.ro/blog/2019/05/16/cpp-is-fun/

Actually, most "most popular software libraries" have either translated docs, or guides in a non-English language. Furthermore, modern browsers can translate text on the fly. Some (like Yandex.Browser [1] not_an_ad) can even translate videos on the fly.

[1] https://yandex.ru/project/browser/streams/technology (RU only)

Sure, most of them have docs in some non-English languages, but rarely all of them. And things like StackOverflow answers, bug reports and discussions, tutorials, and blog posts tend to be mostly in English. Autotranslate works to some extent but can be misleading or confusing when dealing with specialized terms that aren't well represented in its corpus. My Japanese coworkers certainly need to be able to comprehend written English.

Sure docs for massively popular libraries are translated but think about using autocomplete, reading the actual library code, or even just reading other code in your organization. I have to imagine it would be difficult without any English proficiency.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com