As a native french speaker, I feel so uneasy reading source code in french. It feels very very uncanny. I've often wondered if English native speakers feel the same when reading normal source code which is always in English. They probably don't. But how? I've always associated the "other language-ness" to correctness and technicality. It must be so weird to code in your own language. Feels like reading bad pseudo code. It's very nice to be able to map "english" to "technical, correct" and "native language" to "descriptive, approximate, comments, pseudo-code". Having only a single language to work with is like removing a color from the rainbow.
In this particular case, it might also feel uncanny because the keywords were merely translated; but the grammar (most notably word order) doesn't (always) match.
`asynchrone fonction` feels wrong because it's the wrong word order for French; it should be `fonction asynchrone`...
I'm a native English speaker. I do actually remember programming languages feeling a little uncanny at first. Like you can tell that it's "computery" and that the language author tried to make it English-like and only sorta succeeded.
So I think at this point, for me, programming languages just aren't English. One odd thing I've noticed is that in Ruby the `unless` keyword confuses the hell out of me, and yet when speaking English I never get tripped up on the actual word "unless". So I guess it's handy that the keywords in programming happen to be English words, but my comprehension of programming languages seems to occupy another region of my brain.
For anything vaguely technical, I use the English term. I don't feel comfortable in any other language, no matter how well I speak it. It just doesn't sit right with me to use eg a Danish term for density, or power, or eigenvalue, or anything programming.
Part of it is that even though I might know the term, it won't be long before I need to bring in something where I don't know the term. At that point I'll be inventing a local term, when I know what the English term is.
As a native french speaker, I have the same feeling when reading code written with french keywords, except that since I learned boolean and arithmetic in french, it makes more sense to me to read them in french. As others have pointed out, it seems to only be a matter of how you learn to read and write code.
For comparison, in mathematics I learned to read all the symbols in french, and only learned their english equivalent much later, so it feels uneasy for me when i read their english version. So it is clearly a matter of habit that took its root when you learned reading.
As an American...no uncanniness to English. I guess because it was always the default and what was taught.
The first time I encountered a non English PL, I did feel the same uncanniness you spoke of. It felt... wrong? I wish I remembered which one it was. It was probably the first time I realized how prevelant English was, and that PLs could even be written in any language .
I always felt the same and one theory I have is because the imperative nature of source code feels rude if you try and put it in French.
It feels like yelling orders to a dog.
Then I don't know if it's just because in French, despite everyone calling us rude, we are usually quite polite.
Or if it's the same for every ESL.
An implementation of OCaml (similar to Haskell, but from France instead of UK), but with french pastries name. It was half a joke, half a serious study project.
Listen, if you didn’t just spend at least 5 minutes trying to make random foreign accents reading the code to yourself out loud trying to figure out what the code does…
The Russian version linked there is, uh, underwhelming. That whole gopnik vibe is entirely unwarranted. I understand a bit of Spanish and that one is much better in comparison.
I wish the Greek one had a vibe at all, past putting the Rust logo on a gyro. Not even a curse word. You could have some fun with compiler errors and allusions to Oxi Day (which was two days ago).
This is actually in a very aproachable and lenient french. The compiler will offer you a smoke to cool down and think about your syntax from some distance.
Without the proper -—bonjour flag as first argument, I expect the compiler to work against me, pretending to compile fine while introducing subtle users bugs
As a native french speaker, I feel so uneasy reading source code in french. It feels very very uncanny. I've often wondered if English native speakers feel the same when reading normal source code which is always in English. They probably don't. But how? I've always associated the "other language-ness" to correctness and technicality. It must be so weird to code in your own language. Feels like reading bad pseudo code. It's very nice to be able to map "english" to "technical, correct" and "native language" to "descriptive, approximate, comments, pseudo-code". Having only a single language to work with is like removing a color from the rainbow.
In this particular case, it might also feel uncanny because the keywords were merely translated; but the grammar (most notably word order) doesn't (always) match.
`asynchrone fonction` feels wrong because it's the wrong word order for French; it should be `fonction asynchrone`...
I'm a native English speaker. I do actually remember programming languages feeling a little uncanny at first. Like you can tell that it's "computery" and that the language author tried to make it English-like and only sorta succeeded.
So I think at this point, for me, programming languages just aren't English. One odd thing I've noticed is that in Ruby the `unless` keyword confuses the hell out of me, and yet when speaking English I never get tripped up on the actual word "unless". So I guess it's handy that the keywords in programming happen to be English words, but my comprehension of programming languages seems to occupy another region of my brain.
For anything vaguely technical, I use the English term. I don't feel comfortable in any other language, no matter how well I speak it. It just doesn't sit right with me to use eg a Danish term for density, or power, or eigenvalue, or anything programming.
Part of it is that even though I might know the term, it won't be long before I need to bring in something where I don't know the term. At that point I'll be inventing a local term, when I know what the English term is.
The words may be English but it doesn’t feel like English at all because it’s but structured like natural language.
As a native french speaker, I have the same feeling when reading code written with french keywords, except that since I learned boolean and arithmetic in french, it makes more sense to me to read them in french. As others have pointed out, it seems to only be a matter of how you learn to read and write code.
For comparison, in mathematics I learned to read all the symbols in french, and only learned their english equivalent much later, so it feels uneasy for me when i read their english version. So it is clearly a matter of habit that took its root when you learned reading.
As an American...no uncanniness to English. I guess because it was always the default and what was taught.
The first time I encountered a non English PL, I did feel the same uncanniness you spoke of. It felt... wrong? I wish I remembered which one it was. It was probably the first time I realized how prevelant English was, and that PLs could even be written in any language .
It looks more elegant than English.
i thought the verbs in English-programming were meant to be infinitive and not imperative?
Salutations,
I always felt the same and one theory I have is because the imperative nature of source code feels rude if you try and put it in French. It feels like yelling orders to a dog.
Then I don't know if it's just because in French, despite everyone calling us rude, we are usually quite polite. Or if it's the same for every ESL.
The complete dictionary is here: https://github.com/bnjbvr/rouille/blob/principale/rouille_co...
I just can't stop laughing at the "génial" => "super" https://github.com/bnjbvr/rouille/blob/principale/rouille_co...
fk lese(&selbst, schlsl: Zeichenkette) -> Ergebnis<Möglichkeit<&Zeichenkette>, Zeichenkette> { wenn lass Etwas(wöbu) = gefährlich { WÖRTERBUCH.als_ref() } { Gut(wöbu.hole(&schlsl)) } anderenfalls { Fehler("Holt das Wörterbuch".hinein()) } }
https://github.com/michidk/rost
I don't like the non-Germanic ref here in als_ref is not Germanic enough. als_ver (from Verweis) would be nicer.
Indent with two spaces for code formatting.
This absolutely is not readable to me. But woerterbuch and schluessel should of course not be abbreviated, for legibility.
Previously discussed:
Rouille (338 points, 144 comments, Sept 11, 2021) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28490935
Rost – Write rust code in German (55 points, 16 comments, Nov 9 2021) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29159077
Rost – Rust Programming in German (161 points, 115 comments, Mar 25, 2025) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43488490
You must learn about Baguette#.
An implementation of OCaml (similar to Haskell, but from France instead of UK), but with french pastries name. It was half a joke, half a serious study project.
https://github.com/vanilla-extracts/ocaml-baguettesharp-inte...
Years ago the research team behind OCaml released Chamelle, a version of the language localized in French, as an April fool's joke:
https://gallium.inria.fr/blog/ocaml-5/
Listen, if you didn’t just spend at least 5 minutes trying to make random foreign accents reading the code to yourself out loud trying to figure out what the code does…
We’re different people.
There were actually localized version of Visual Basic for Applications.
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_Basic_for_Applications?...
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21352796
This is hilarious, thank you for your effort good sir, this is what I pay the internet for! :)
Name conflict with the OG rust synchronous web framework: https://github.com/tomaka/rouille
The Russian version linked there is, uh, underwhelming. That whole gopnik vibe is entirely unwarranted. I understand a bit of Spanish and that one is much better in comparison.
I don't know russian, so I can't judge the quality, but Tsoding's lang might suit you better:
https://github.com/tsoding/good_training_language
I thought the Russian version was pretty funny. Thanks for calling it out.
idk, as I see it - it's funny if you are 14 years old or non native, so the whole vibe is a bit amusing.
Just like it may be amusing to watch "Don't Be a Menace to South Central While Drinking Your Juice in the Hood" as long as you understand satire.
I wish the Greek one had a vibe at all, past putting the Rust logo on a gyro. Not even a curse word. You could have some fun with compiler errors and allusions to Oxi Day (which was two days ago).
Slovak one does not use diacritics so it’s quite hard to read.
Is the compiler now gonna scream at me for using the wrong gender?
This is actually in a very aproachable and lenient french. The compiler will offer you a smoke to cool down and think about your syntax from some distance.
> Arf("fetchez le dico".vers())
lol, it'll just say 'Noh!' and then ignore any further input. Especially if you forget the --bonjour flag.
Without the proper -—bonjour flag as first argument, I expect the compiler to work against me, pretending to compile fine while introducing subtle users bugs
This is very lenient French: "fetchez le dico"
There is also a Rust minimal HTTP server by this name. (Incidentally, one of the few that isn't Async.)
hahaha j'adore que le mot québécois "calisse" est inclus
I like the translation of the WTFPL as « la license rien a branler »
If you don’t know the idiom, you should check it out, it’s both particularly vulgar and very commonly used.
But is it more vulgar than the English version? Deep question.
Be sure to look at the "other languages" section; and then wonder whether all of it was generated by AI.
It definitely was.
I don‘t think so. At least the french one is quite old and was discussed here before AI was in wide use: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28490935
I remember that many of the other languages popped up a little later.
This is fun. My son is learning esperanto, is there a version for that, maybe a weekend projekto for him.
https://github.com/dscottboggs/rustteksto