instead of ‘seriar’ (in Portuguese), people are saying ‘seriALIZar’, due to the English word ‘serialize’
instead of ‘iniciar’, people are saying ‘iniciALIZar’, due to ‘initialize’
instead of ‘cifrar’, people are saying ‘criptografar’, due to ‘cryptography’
instead of ‘devolver’, prople are saying ‘retornar’, due to ‘return’

it’s difficult to find someone who says ‘servidor’ (Portuguese), instead of ‘server’, and ‘núcleo’ instead of ‘kernel’. And these people do not even pronounce correctly (most Brazilians have difficulties pronouncing SERVER and KERNEL).

people make imprecise translations into English, pronounce them wrongly, and mixture them in a sentence in Portuguese, with unnecessary neologisms.

Also, don’t forget that at least Europe has a more or less completely open internal market for its workforce. As a Spanish company, you can hire Dutch, German or French programmers. Given the current scarcity of good programmers this sometimes may be your only option. How on earth are you going to let a Dutch programmer work with your Spanish source code?

Next to that, thing about possibilities of selling your code. No German company is -ever- going to buy Spanish source code. Most likely not even a large Spanish company will buy your code, as most large companies (that operate internationally and/or have a multi-lingual workforce) have already established code conventions that say English is the default language.

Furthermore, when asking questions on forums for which you have to copy paste fragments of your source, you constantly have to rename all your variables. No one is going to look into your code fragment if it uses Spanish variable names or comments (unless it’s a pure Spanish forum of course, but even then…)

I don’t think you got my point. I am not underrating my language or any other language. In fact, if you explore this website you will understand that my purpose is quite the opposite. I am actually promoting the work of Hispanic developers (Profiles section, tutorials, etc.) and my culture (the store section features Hispanic movies). However, it is a fact that English is a universal technical language. I don’t know for how long, but at the moment it is. After all, Latin was a universal language in the Roman times until the empire was dissolved.

In regards to the use of online dictionaries, I am actually writing an article about when you should use them. In summary:

- translations of single words are very accurate (in particular in Spanish).
- translations of simple sentences have some mistakes.
- translations of complex structures are awful.

If you include very long descriptions of the logic of your programs inside the code, you
are mistaken. Your project documentation is the place for a detailed description of the logic and data structure. The documentation can (must) be written in your native language (preferably by a technical writer). If it is necessary to translate to other languages, this task should be done by native speakers of those languages with technical background (I don’t trust on the translations of average professional translators).

“The only reason why you should code in English (and not in the language of your own country) is if you work in a transnational company (or if you are writing open-source software), and your code is supposed to be read by several people from different countries.”

Precisely, that is my point. Open Source applications are becoming more and more popular and Outsourcing is one of the biggest businesses. Most ICT Latinamerican companies are growing due to Outsourcing (mainly from the US).

Now, if you are going to develop webapps for your local video store or a proprietary application for a local business and you don’t feel comfortable with English, go ahead and write your code in your native language.

I am not a linguistic either. I am actually a software developer. What I wrote is based on personal experience.