My Two Cents about Coding in English

Jens Schauder blogged about English as the Lingua Franca in Software projects. He concludes that non native speakers should force themselves into doing their work in English to compete in a more and more international market.

After working for three years in an international project I absolutely agree with his opinion. Having no other chance to communicate with my japanese and indian colleagues than in english, the first few weeks were really hard. But I've learned several things:

1. It does not matter whether you speak 100% grammatically correct. It's more important to talk fluent and confident rather than being sure, that every grammar rule you've learned 10 years ago is correctly applied. My impression is people respect me because of my technical reputation, not because I do speak absolutely error free. (I doubt that I do, this blog gives many proofs)
2. The more you do things, the better you get. And the more confident you get. As Jens said, it's right, start reading things english, write things in english, and if you have the chance, do speak as much english as you can.

But meanwhile I've also seen the other side of the medal: If your code is commented in your mother tongue - or even more worse: Implemented in your mother tongue - then you've got a more or less limited market of people how can replace you. If the code is in english you extend the potential candidates to the rest of the industrialized world. And if you now consider that people in east europe, asia and india cost about a fourth of your salary, then you might start worrying. Currently I do not worry about these aspects, but if you were stuck in your job for 20 years, have not learned contemporary technologies then you might not be attractive for a modern, agile market and maybe you have a different opinion about this topic. But on the other hand, if you are one these people, you might not read blogs as well :-)