Europe's Spoken Languages / Programming Language

[Jesse Torres]

Since Europe is composed of countries that speak different languages, what is the primary programming language that is utilized when working in IT? For example, if a worker uses Java in France or Germany to develop, does he / she use Java�s English Version? I know that this question is obvious to many, but I am genuinely curious!

[Svend Rost]

Does Java come in different languages ?

I can only speak for Denmark where we use the
the english version, but my guess is that that's
the version that's beeing used in most of
Europe.

/Svend Rost

[Jeroen Wenting]

never knew there were localised versions

If there are, the breakdown is likely as follows:
France uses French version
Germany uses mainly German version
Spain uses mainly Spanish version
the rest use mainly English except some French speaking Swiss who use French version.

I've never seen a Dutch version and would not use it if available given a choice. In my experience localised versions are usually poor quality (translations suck).
I even use English versions of Windows and Office at home despite localised versions being available for that very reason despite the localised versions being cheaper.

[Frank Silbermann]

Originally posted by Jeroen Wenting:
never knew there were localised versions
I've never seen a Dutch version and would not use it if available given a choice. In my experience localised versions are usually poor quality (translations suck).

Wasn't Java (part of) a Dutch colony at one time?

[Jesse Torres]

I apologize for the confusion. I guess what I am trying to ask is the following. How can a German who only understands basic English or no English at all, write complex Java logic? Or is it required for non English speaking countries to hire an English speaking workforce? Will German IT companies outsource to English speaking companies? Or is there a German JDK?

[Jesse Torres]

Originally posted by Frank Silbermann:


Wasn't Java (part of) a Dutch colony at one time?

You are absolutely correct. Indonesia was a Dutch colony.Here is the link!

[Helen Thomas]

All these countries had programmers using COBOL, SAP/ABAP4, Fortran
which only had English versions AFAIK. The point being it won't have been difficult for them to use Java once the learning curve was passed.
[ September 29, 2004: Message edited by: Helen Thomas ]

[Tim Holloway]

Originally posted by Jesse Torres:
I apologize for the confusion. I guess what I am trying to ask is the following. How can a German who only understands basic English or no English at all, write complex Java logic? Or is it required for non English speaking countries to hire an English speaking workforce? Will German IT companies outsource to English speaking companies? Or is there a German JDK?

Well, I've worked on IBM mainframe assembler language programs where the comments were all in Italian and had no problems, and if you can't eat it, I probably don't know the Italian word for it.

Even in Japanese, the programming language reserved words themselves are almost invariably in English. The only case I know where an architecture was specifically designed in another language was Djikstra's "P" and "V" semaphore operation codes (Dutch for Lock and Unlock, so I understand).

Java is very strong on I18N, and I'm pretty sure that I recall distros which fell back to a specific country/language code for the defaults. But I think a simple environment variable setting can override that. Come to think of it, I'm pretty sure I've even seen German stack traces posted in the JOnAS message forums (objectweb.org)

So the program text is usually "English", but the application itself may support virtually any language(s)

I think we have a forum specifically for discussion of I18N. Non?

[Svend Rost]

Jesse Torres wrote:
How can a German who only understands basic English or no English at all, write complex Java logic?

Because he's able to speak, read and write english.

As far as I remember, you get english in the 3th or 4th grade in Germany.

/Svend Rost

[Jesse Torres]

Originally posted by Svend Rost:


Because he's able to speak, read and write english.

As far as I remember, you get english in the 3th or 4th grade in Germany.

/Svend Rost

Thanks for information. I didn't know about English was part of the curriculum in Germany.

[Jeroen Wenting]

Dutch schoolchildren now learn English from age 7. Mandatory classes run to about age 14 or 15 (depending on type of schooling), after that most will continue to age 16-18 and get it as part of their exams.

Also remember that most people doing Java (or most other languages) programming have higher education.
Most study material for that is in English, sometimes classes are in English even!
Students are expected to be fluent enough in English to understand advanced technical texts (spoken and written) and write similar texts as well.

If I look at my programming books, there's only 2 or 3 Dutch ones (all older ones), 1 or 2 German ones and the other nearly a hundred are all English.

In Germany there is more localised study material available (Dutch is a market that's too small to make translating all but the most basic or well known texts commercially viable) but still English plays an important role for students.

[Mike Gershman]

How can a German who only understands basic English or no English at all, write complex Java logic?

Except for COBOL, there is not much natural language syntax in computer languages. You just have to memorize 50 or so reserved words and keep some English-based class and member names on a cheat sheet and you're in business.

That doesn't take much English.