India (mostly) speaks english at a level that allows them to participate in the "original" Stackoverflow.
Arabic? As much as there is a big population, I would venture that there is not enough demand.
Brazil, OTOH, is a reasonably industrialized country with some industries that are quite advanced: Genomics and Banking come to mind. It has the 3rd or 4th largest telecommunications infrastructure in the world. Put that together with the fact they can't speak English that well and you have a big under-served audience.
Though the cynic in me thinks that this is just a way to contain the pesky Brazilians, who are known for not being exactly civil in online communities. By letting the less educated Brazilians have their own yard, they won't do as much damage to the main property.
Ps: shout out to Gabriel (Gabe). He worked with us for a year or so and it was a pleasure to have him on the team. Great guy, super smart and zero ego.
But I don't think it's in the SO best interest to contain any group. They already have a moderation system for dealing with anoying people. I'd put that cinic at rest.
What this will achieve is making learning to program much easier for portugueese speaking people. A much needed thing. But I doubt that anybody will stop searching problems in english, just the sheer number and selection bias are enough to keep the best content in english.
Anyway, great icon. Stack Overflow with cedilha!
As for the youth that doesn't speak English well yet, I suppose they could see the low quality that this PT-SO would be as an incentive to actually start learning it :-)
[0] https://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/23539/stack-overf...
Um grande número de desenvolvedores talentosos, em que Grande parte deles se sentisse muito mais confortável em falar sua própria língua do que o inglês
Why start with portugese?
We wanted to begin with a community that fulfilled two requisites:
Having a large number of talented developers and many of them feeling much more comfortable speaking their own language than English.
It seems to me this is a move to catch Brazilian developers, a wise move I'd say.
About Hindi: keep in mind that English is still an official Indian language, especially since the English Language Amendment Bill.
About Arabic: there are several kinds of Arabic, and not all are mutually intelligible. As a result, the number of people speaking it is a controversial figure... you can then compare the 200 million of native Portuguese speakers with the 280 million of native Modern Standard Arabic speakers.
>[Nota do tradutor: Porque português é a melhor língua, o Brasil é o melhor país e o Jay não consegue ler o que a gente escreve ;)]
>Queríamos começar com uma comunidade que atendesse a dois requisitos:
>Um grande número de desenvolvedores talentosos, em que Grande parte deles se sentisse muito mais confortável em falar sua própria língua do que o inglês
>Então a escolha foi muito simples. O Brasil conta com uma das maiores e mais fortes comunidades de programação do mundo, e isso sem contar Portugal, Moçambique, Angola e outros países menores que acrescentam ainda mais desenvolvedores talentos a esse grupo.
Why start with portuguese?
We wanted to start a community that met two goals:
A big number of talented developers that did feel much more confortable to speak in its own native language than in english.
Then the choise was pretty simple. Brazil have one of the stronger and vibrant programmer communities in the world, and lets not forget about Portugal, Moçambique(how is this spelled in english?) and Angola that adds even more to the talented pool of developers in this group
I dont know if its because the country is so big.. but culturally people dont care enough for english.. its something everybody wants to know about, of course .. but only the kids of the rich people that can pay for extensive english private class in expensive courses can handle it.. also they create couses with years (2 to 4) long courses.. so they end to be very expensive.. so its something that get in the end of the list of needs..
For instance, i am lucky, cause i learned it from movies when i was teenager, with subtitles on it.. it just happen naturally.. and also.. i needed to go further, as i work with technology.. and yeah.. the good things are in english.. so reading just completed the understanding of it..
but i see a ton of people here(in Brazil), (VERY GOOD hackers) that wont touch this world, because its in english.. Brazillian communitites always have a life on its own.. with its own culture.. like a little bubble .. (remember the Orkut phenomenon?)
Thats why Brazil is such a good opportunity for underdogs.. it doesnt follow too much the political fashion/tendency of the world.. Brazil has a move on its own.. you need to be here enough time to feel it.. and its vibrant..alive..
But its also not isolated.. its has much more in common with US than most of the people think.. with a destiny on its own
This seems to be a newer trend. The courses used to be much longer than that, to the order of 8 to 10 years.
Yeah, you read that right. Unless you took shortcuts (I had placement tests every once a while which let me skip several years), you'd spend a decade 'learning' English.
They were either creating the curriculum for the lowest common denominator, or the courses were a scam.
My brother skipped all the nonsense and learned enough English to have meaning conversations at age 8, playing Ultima Online. Then a couple of semesters after that helped with the vocabulary and pronunciation.
That, and movies, and setting the operating system to English, after some nagging on my part.