I'm one of the lucky ones who have been able to study programming in Finnish (my native language). I don't even recall when was the change when "osoitin" (a Finnish word for pointer) did change into "pointer" in my life. I just took that example because I think pointers have been the hardest thing to grasp when I was coming from Turbo Pascal world and learning C++. I have got a small language bath younger when my parents were going through some private English lessons and constantly practiced at home by speaking it. Still, I see it has been very beneficial to learn with my own language, and afterward, it has been very easy to start using English. The same applies e.g. to knitting, I would have no idea what to do if I would have needed to learn in English, but afterward, it has been easy to google translations for terms to access international material. I think the counter-argument I've heard the most is the terminology, as you mentioned, to save time to learn it once with the "terminal" language. But as my experience shows it's very easy to find out those translations afterward, the point is invalid. So, even if I, a mediocre learner with no disabilities find it beneficial to learn in my native language, I can sure see the benefits for people who struggle with different things. Let's not burden them more with the translations and let them focus on learning. Great post!
I don't really have a strong opinion on the question of the right to learn programming in one's native language, but I know first hand that translations can be very hard to find. This is especially true for error messages: if you have a localized program without fully localized documentation (which is often the case), good luck searching the web for its errors.
I probably was not deep enough in Turbo Pascal to have used them. My background in learning by my native language included only that teaching and books and other materials were in Finnish. Software was not, and I agree it would be really hard to localize the errors etc. though back in the day I studied, there was no possibility to google anything either 😅
There's a modern, cross-platform, and free (as in freedom) successor to Borland Pascal/Delphi: freepascal.org/
Has a classic "white on blue" console IDE for a nostalgia mode, too. :)
I'm one of the lucky ones who have been able to study programming in Finnish (my native language). I don't even recall when was the change when "osoitin" (a Finnish word for pointer) did change into "pointer" in my life. I just took that example because I think pointers have been the hardest thing to grasp when I was coming from Turbo Pascal world and learning C++. I have got a small language bath younger when my parents were going through some private English lessons and constantly practiced at home by speaking it. Still, I see it has been very beneficial to learn with my own language, and afterward, it has been very easy to start using English. The same applies e.g. to knitting, I would have no idea what to do if I would have needed to learn in English, but afterward, it has been easy to google translations for terms to access international material. I think the counter-argument I've heard the most is the terminology, as you mentioned, to save time to learn it once with the "terminal" language. But as my experience shows it's very easy to find out those translations afterward, the point is invalid. So, even if I, a mediocre learner with no disabilities find it beneficial to learn in my native language, I can sure see the benefits for people who struggle with different things. Let's not burden them more with the translations and let them focus on learning. Great post!
Note that TurboPascal does have pointers. ;)
I don't really have a strong opinion on the question of the right to learn programming in one's native language, but I know first hand that translations can be very hard to find. This is especially true for error messages: if you have a localized program without fully localized documentation (which is often the case), good luck searching the web for its errors.
I probably was not deep enough in Turbo Pascal to have used them. My background in learning by my native language included only that teaching and books and other materials were in Finnish. Software was not, and I agree it would be really hard to localize the errors etc. though back in the day I studied, there was no possibility to google anything either 😅
There's a modern, cross-platform, and free (as in freedom) successor to Borland Pascal/Delphi: freepascal.org/
Has a classic "white on blue" console IDE for a nostalgia mode, too. :)
Cool! I should check that out. I even might try to turn on my 486-laptop which has all my pascal code.