Re:Geographically isolated bugs
by dragonwriter on Tuesday January 13, 2015 @07:13PM
(#8883468)
> I worked on a Korean piece of code. All the variable names were in English but the comments were in Korean. Why, just why?
Variable names were probably in English because it enhanced readability of the code as the keywords, etc., of the language were probably also English-derived.
The comments were probably in Korean because they aren't part the code, they are side text that is intended to communicate clearly from the programmers to other people -- and the team writing them and the expected audience was Korean, and writing in English would have required translation both on read and write, greatly increasing the likelihood of miscommunication. Having an English speaker that didn't read Korean come into work on it later was probably not anticipated at the time it was written.
Variable names were probably in English because it enhanced readability of the code as the keywords, etc., of the language were probably also English-derived.
The comments were probably in Korean because they aren't part the code, they are side text that is intended to communicate clearly from the programmers to other people -- and the team writing them and the expected audience was Korean, and writing in English would have required translation both on read and write, greatly increasing the likelihood of miscommunication. Having an English speaker that didn't read Korean come into work on it later was probably not anticipated at the time it was written.