It wasn't that difficult, you kind of learn English along the way. However, since you do not listen/talk, you don't know how words are actually pronounced. So you just guess, and it's often wrong. Like I once thought "value" is pronounced "vuhloo" (stress on 2nd syllable).

Sadly there's still many engineers in the country (including seniors) who never bothered learning English properly, so they mispronounce everything all the time. They know what all the words mean, but they don't know how they're pronounced, or how to use them in a sentence.

You can ask any non-native English speaker. And then someone who grow up speaking English. The answers would be un-shockingly the same - programming languages [relatively] aren't that hard. English - is fucking insoluble.

Beginner programmers tend to focus on programming languages. Programming is for humans. Focus on the human language!

Well, I just think for me, it would have been a lot harder to get started if key words like ‘if’, ‘while’, ‘int’ etc were arbitrary gobbledygook instead of terms I already knew. I guess that’s wrong?