Listen, if you didn’t just spend at least 5 minutes trying to make random foreign accents reading the code to yourself out loud trying to figure out what the code does…
The Russian version linked there is, uh, underwhelming. That whole gopnik vibe is entirely unwarranted. I understand a bit of Spanish and that one is much better in comparison.
I was immediately put off by the Spanish version when I saw it was called "rústico", which does not translate to rust at all, it means rustic. The Spanish word for rust would be "óxido".
An implementation of OCaml (similar to Haskell, but from France instead of UK), but with french pastries name. It was half a joke, half a serious study project.
I find it slightly disappointing that they haven't stuck with the Rust practice of picking short or abbreviated words when they're clearly unambiguous - such as "fn" instead of "func" or "function". E.g. why Résultat<...> when you can write just Résu? Why PeutÊtre and not Ptêt, very common in quick language, e.g. for texting or chatting?
As a native french speaker, I feel so uneasy reading source code in french. It feels very very uncanny. I've often wondered if English native speakers feel the same when reading normal source code which is always in English. They probably don't. But how? I've always associated the "other language-ness" to correctness and technicality. It must be so weird to code in your own language. Feels like reading bad pseudo code. It's very nice to be able to map "english" to "technical, correct" and "native language" to "descriptive, approximate, comments, pseudo-code". Having only a single language to work with is like removing a color from the rainbow.
The closest I've ever felt to this as a native English speaker is reading words in music scores in English. I'm a classically trained cellist, and grew up learning notation with Italian and French words for directions and expression. I've never learned either of those languages, save the words used in music notation. Seeing a score with those words in English just feels... wrong. Not in any big way, but as you said: uncanny. Definitely get the "bad psuedocode" vibe, because to me it English in music notation feels similar -- like the person who wrote it didn't know what they were doing, even though the notation makes perfect sense and the music is good. It removes some of the flair of the art of the notation itself for me.
I started self-learning programming from Swedish resources, using Swedish variable names and (trying) to store Swedish text in databases. The good news is that I learned about encoding and how to store "åäö" properly early on, the bad news is that it was really difficult to ask questions on Stack Overflow when your PHP is 50% Swedish and 50% English. Actually entering the code into Notepad++ was difficult too, weird finger movements to get to the common "special" characters.
Since them I've moved to US keyboards after starting to work with others in an office and not being able to pair program otherwise, and obviously default everything else to English too.
I'm not a native English speaker, but when I come across that sort of "programmed in the country's language" programs today it does take some time to get used to the style and translating stuff while also trying to understand the logic. I wouldn't say it's a huge time-sink, but particularly names can be difficult to convert/translate on the fly when you're trying to get product and developers to agree to what we're talking about.
> I've often wondered if English native speakers feel the same when reading normal source code which is always in English.
I think that depends on if they understand how to program. For me, as a native English speaker, a computer program is not speech.
In a program, there's three areas where the spoken language influences:
1: The keywords in the language: IE, "if," "switch," "return," ect. These take on a meaning in my head that is distinct from the meaning of the spoken word. "class" is a good example: Its use in programming is shortened from "classification" which comes out of category theory; but its use in English means something very different. Likewise, "if" in my head has such a different meaning in code that if "si" were used, it wouldn't make a different.
2: The API names: By convention, APIs typically are English. Learning these is like learning any kind of professional lingo. I've never tried using a non-English API, and would probably struggle significantly if I had to.
3: My code itself: A significant amount of my time spent writing a computer program is making sure that my code is understandable to me and the other people who have to maintain the program. There's always going to be an "other-worldliness" to a program until someone understands the conventions and style.
The first language I gained any proficiency in was Logo which, as an educational tool, was translated to my language and that felt to me like a 1960s understanding of communicating with an AI.
I learned English via immersion as I was thrown into an international environment at age four and to me it radiated confidence as the few native English speakers there were obviously much more proficient in the language.
I have a problem with the word "robot", as it's essentially a loanword from my family of languages, but I was unaware of that initially and once I've made that connection, the "coolness" faded somewhat.
Strangely French to me has this same air of confidence, displayed in, among other, the French word for "computer". Truly the French copy no one, nobody copies the French.
I've worked with Japanese and German code. It is definitely unfamiliar and gets me thinking a lot more about how I approach code. I'm liking your description as I keep wanting to map "english" to "technical, correct" too and this helps. thank you!
There are Russian and Chinese programming languages. Quite natural. But there are already Hindi programming languages as well. Mind blowing detail! Thank you for sharing this list.
Not surprised this sort of thing pops up specifically for french. France is known to not speak English in some situations even though they know English.
Just wait until the Quebecois government here in Canada hears about this. They are militant about avoiding english at all costs. They changed all the STOP signs in Quebec to ARRET because STOP was too english.
I like to imagine a world, a worse one, where programming languages were localised.
This might initially have been a versioning nightmare, with different compiler binaries for each localisation.
Later, it could become standard practice to ship a single compiler containing all supported localisations, the correct one being chosen from either system language, a project-wide setting, a preprocessor flag in each file, or some combination of these.
Everyone would have to learn a little Polish, and "Source Code Translator" would be a profession.
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[ 2.3 ms ] story [ 67.8 ms ] threadWe’re different people.
If I'd used AI, I probably would've included grammatical gender for nouns.
If you don’t know the idiom, you should check it out, it’s both particularly vulgar and very commonly used.
An implementation of OCaml (similar to Haskell, but from France instead of UK), but with french pastries name. It was half a joke, half a serious study project.
https://github.com/vanilla-extracts/ocaml-baguettesharp-inte...
https://github.com/michidk/rost
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_Basic_for_Applications?...
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21352796
I just can't stop laughing at the "génial" => "super" https://github.com/bnjbvr/rouille/blob/principale/rouille_co...
Merde is an alias for "calisse" and "oups" , see https://github.com/bnjbvr/rouille/blob/7e9523fe24026bff1a3a7...
But the best one is "merde" | "calisse" | "oups" => "panic"
"super" is also a Latin word that's valid French.
> Au-dessus de, exprimant une supériorité dans la qualité
https://www.larousse.fr/dictionnaires/francais/super-/75409
Possibly a remnant of being bilingual as a child (I am not anymore, and was not by the time I learned programming later in my childhood)?
I do not think I ever really thought of programming languages as being English, but English like/derived from English.
Since them I've moved to US keyboards after starting to work with others in an office and not being able to pair program otherwise, and obviously default everything else to English too.
I'm not a native English speaker, but when I come across that sort of "programmed in the country's language" programs today it does take some time to get used to the style and translating stuff while also trying to understand the logic. I wouldn't say it's a huge time-sink, but particularly names can be difficult to convert/translate on the fly when you're trying to get product and developers to agree to what we're talking about.
I think that depends on if they understand how to program. For me, as a native English speaker, a computer program is not speech.
In a program, there's three areas where the spoken language influences:
1: The keywords in the language: IE, "if," "switch," "return," ect. These take on a meaning in my head that is distinct from the meaning of the spoken word. "class" is a good example: Its use in programming is shortened from "classification" which comes out of category theory; but its use in English means something very different. Likewise, "if" in my head has such a different meaning in code that if "si" were used, it wouldn't make a different.
IE, in code we use "class" as if https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Class_(programming), which came from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Class_(set_theory) and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category_theory; but in English it's commonly meant to be https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Class_(education).
2: The API names: By convention, APIs typically are English. Learning these is like learning any kind of professional lingo. I've never tried using a non-English API, and would probably struggle significantly if I had to.
3: My code itself: A significant amount of my time spent writing a computer program is making sure that my code is understandable to me and the other people who have to maintain the program. There's always going to be an "other-worldliness" to a program until someone understands the conventions and style.
I learned English via immersion as I was thrown into an international environment at age four and to me it radiated confidence as the few native English speakers there were obviously much more proficient in the language.
I have a problem with the word "robot", as it's essentially a loanword from my family of languages, but I was unaware of that initially and once I've made that connection, the "coolness" faded somewhat.
Strangely French to me has this same air of confidence, displayed in, among other, the French word for "computer". Truly the French copy no one, nobody copies the French.
Programming in English = X Programming in French = Y
You're used to X and now it's Y. So it feels weird. English speakers are used to X and it's X. So it feels normal.
I then spend an unholy amount of time translating the words to English, trying to hit the right traduction.
Despite loving my language and defending it in normal situations, Internet and dev is in English and this is life.
Rouille (338 points, 144 comments, Sept 11, 2021) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28490935
Rost – Write rust code in German (55 points, 16 comments, Nov 9 2021) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29159077
Rost – Rust Programming in German (161 points, 115 comments, Mar 25, 2025) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43488490
Let's create "Piaf" to see la vie en rose, the French à la https://codewithrockstar.com/.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LSE_(programming_language)
It’s just as well because when native speakers reply, I can’t understand them. The words are too smeared together for me.
OTOH, when a non-native French speaker (who may not know English) speaks fluently in French, I can actually hear each word and understand them easily.