As discussed elsewhere in the thread, the few dozen keywords are a different matter (and are just memorized to mean "make the computer do ..."), but having useful error messages from your compiler helps get stuff sorted out more quickly.
There are, to this day, people who get in trouble when their computers reply to them in English, including coding folks. I bet they were (and are) thankful for initiatives like yours, but they won't have the vocabulary to tell you.
> having useful error messages from your compiler helps get stuff sorted out more quickly.
The definition of useful varies though. Many people starting out don't have the ability to understand some error messages, so being able to search for the error message is most useful. If everyone in the world has the same error message, finding an explanation for the error is a lot easier.
I'm well aware. But China is also the only country (or even bloc) in the world that's aiming for a fully internal supply chain for high tech. Not sure you can transform basic materials into a laptop (to pick one simple example) at scale without China anymore, but China is on a pretty successful track to do that without anybody else.
Once they get there, I'm not sure they have a lot of motivation left to do high-tech on foreigners' terms and in foreign languages.
While it doesn't follow that "we" need to learn Chinese then, whatever they'll use instead of StackExchange will simply outnumber the English version.
For hardware, perhaps, but the Chinese have no realistic way to replace the rest of the world for software. If they want to sell their hardware to the rest of the world, English is the only realistic language to use for that. I see no evidence of mass learning of Chinese anywhere.
The US did not embrace english, the US were a set of english colonists who managed to absorb lots of foreigners with the clear contract that not adapting to their culture/language would result in bad outcomes.
> having useful error messages from your compiler helps get stuff sorted out more quickly.
We're still struggling with this in english. Think about how often the default reaction still is to google a compiler error, unless it's one of a handful of common ones you see often. Compiler errors are often opaque, even to the best programmers that speak english natively. A significant base of software emits error numbers with thin descriptions at best, which then have to be looked up in a manual anyway.
Localized error messages are detrimental to solving the problem as googling the error message in a different language will prevent you from finding a solution in the main language.
This sounds like it's coming from someone who has never had to help relatives fix their broken Windows PCs localized in a language spoken by only a few million people.
There are, to this day, people who get in trouble when their computers reply to them in English, including coding folks. I bet they were (and are) thankful for initiatives like yours, but they won't have the vocabulary to tell you.