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0 pointsbryanrasmussen1y ago0 comments

I have worked in a couple places where some of the code was not in English, and it was incredibly annoying, like an affectation.

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lawn1y ago

As a Swede I sometimes encounter new programmers using Swedish instead of English and it's incredibly jarring.

It's a little bit better if only the comments are in Swedish but it's still annoying...

Luckily it's very rare.

arkh1y ago

Until you start working on a code base made for something local only and with domain specific words. So much joy trying to remember how some word was translated for your code when a user reports a bug or ask for some new feature.

Bonus point when the people who decided to use English words are also all proud of their "DDD" architecture.

throwaway10531y ago

I agree. It makes sense when the code needs to handle domain specific words.

Based on my experience in Norway, it is common to use English but there is also not a complete surprise to find code in Norwegian either.

I remember looking at code written by a Norwegian government agency many years ago, and asking why they used Norwegian names for functions and variables. Didn't everyone use English? The answer was that they had so much domain specific terminology that it is not only hard to find English equivalents, it was so ingrained in the business logic that they don't want to risk any confusion and legal consequences. If a function was named validateFoo, then "Foo" had a single shared understanding.

lawn1y ago

Oh I'm working on a local only project right now and I also feel the pain of badly translated Swedish words. I've spent this week trying to decipher a section of code, trying to map then back to the Swedish concepts.

I've also experienced a similar situation in an English context where the concept is renamed on UI, while everywhere in the code it uses the old name. Then things are starting to mix with each other and then a new concept is introduced with the old name...

Fun times.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse

0 comments

lawn1y ago

As a Swede I sometimes encounter new programmers using Swedish instead of English and it's incredibly jarring.

It's a little bit better if only the comments are in Swedish but it's still annoying...

Luckily it's very rare.

arkh1y ago

Bonus point when the people who decided to use English words are also all proud of their "DDD" architecture.

throwaway10531y ago

I agree. It makes sense when the code needs to handle domain specific words.

Based on my experience in Norway, it is common to use English but there is also not a complete surprise to find code in Norwegian either.

lawn1y ago

Fun times.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse