Hacker News Reader

Comment by deanc | Hacker News Reader

Maybe the author is a non-native English speaker, and this enables him to communicate things he's not able to do himself. Should OSS maintainers start hiring professional translators? Are you going to fund that?

We really should stop jumping to conclusions and shaming people for using these tools just because you don't like the language of the LLM. How is a non native speaker meant to determine what is English slop and what isn't?

I should also note, I am a native speaker. There's absolutely nothing wrong with what's written in the part you chose to paraphrase, and it makes sense to me.

View on HN

A non-native speaker most likely writes more 'understandable' English than the weird convoluted Claude style.

FWIW though, you can ask an LLM to write in 'Simplified Technical English' (see: https://www.asd-ste100.org/), which at times reads like its written for a child, but it is much better for inclusion of non-native speakers.

> Should OSS maintainers start hiring professional translators?

The world existed before 2022.

This is a recent degradation; they've been writing blog entries for years.

As a non native English speaker I can also attest to this trade being extremely demanding of English fluency:

> public static void DoTheThing(Configuration config)

Isn't something you can not understand and still function as a software engineer. Yes, some schools and universities teach in other languages, but the entire ecosystem from code to documentation to articles is nearly almost always in English.

It doesn't matter. I work with people who aren't native speakers (in a country where English-education is a very high standard) but are mostly fluent in day to day conversation and meetings and they are not comfortable writing long-form texts - and it shows. Your expectations are unrealistic.

> Your expectations are unrealistic.

No they are not.

Claude isn’t the only option for such a person, as translation tools exist, and English-speaking colleagues exist to proof-read.

In any case, the article author writes perfectly well in English pre LLM era: https://www.kochan.io/nodejs/it-is-ok-to-keep-random-things-...

Ditto. I've started to wonder if the real problem with many of these complaints about LLM writing is actually reading comprehension.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com