How can I deal with developers who don't use English in code?

Question

Possible Duplicate:
Code maintenance: keeping a bad pattern when extending new code for being consistent, or not?

I'm working on a project for a Greek public organization, as a part for a course semester project. I have to develop a 3-tier application that manages financial data. A professor of mine acts as an advisor and is helping me on the project.

I write my own code but there are also pieces of code written by other developers that I can also use, and some the code is also written by my professor. The Greek developers program without using any patterns or conventions, they are generally unaware of phrases like "best-practices" and "programming methodology". They just write code of pure quality. Most of them are at least 10 years more experienced than me but I am on my way. My professor is a "pragmatic programmer" and produces "clean code that works" of high quality.

The Greek developers speak English as well. The problem is that some of them use greeklish for the various names of variables, classes and methods-obviously greek charachters cannot be used for such purposes. For example, the greek translation of "user" is "χρήστης" which in greeklish could be written in the following ways:

• xristis,
• xrhsths,
• hristis,
• christis,
• ...

As a result, the same meaning can be expressed with different characters. Some of the developers use English in their code, and there are no naming conventions at all.

I'm working on this project just for the sake of knowledge and further practice. I would like to apply practices I read in books in software that can also be used and modified by others.

Should I keep using greeklish just to be in harmony with the already existing code? In that case, who knows In a few months I may get valuable feedback for my effort, which will eventually make me a better programmer.

Or, should I just keep doing the right thing, taking example from my professor? In that case my code might be an one-use throw-away effort because none of the Greek developers would like to follow a new set of conventions.

Answer 1

Greeklish is no different than any other internet only form of slang. It originates in a dark era when there was minimal support for the language on computers, back when we said code page instead of character encoding. Nowadays, what you are describing is the equivalent of using "lolspeak", and it has no place in code.

You should really use English, and if possible advocate against Greeklish and for proper naming conventions. In any case, consistency is key. If they refuse to adopt English, at least they have to make sure to use exactly the same form of each word everywhere.

I know a little too well how public organizations work in Greece, so that's probably a lost cause and you should just tough it out.

Did you discuss any of this with your professor?

Answer 2

Related to coding practices:

Consistency is king. Whichever way you name your variables you either:

• Stick to it no matter how weird it is as long as it is consistent, or
• Refactor the rest of the codebase to fit the new convention.

Regarding the language, it is never possible to code only in a native language. You can either code entirely in US English or use a weird hybrid language. Even if you name all your your variables and functions in Greek, you'd still have library calls in English and in languages like Java, you'd have to create even more weird names like getHristis.

I've seen some code written in a mix of Serbian and English a few times(I guess you'd call it Serblish) and my reaction was similar to yours. That practice doesn't have any benefit at all, since you'd get code that no one understands. Although I am a native speaker of Serbian I couldn't understand some parts of the code clearly, because some Serbian words were mutilated in order to fit the code. Not to mention the problem with false friends.

But, you know all that already. The problem you have is

Related to organizational practices:

Unfortunately, you don't create the coding conventions in your current team.

Try to find out what the conventions are (if any) and try to stick with them. You could try to tell your teammates what you think, but don't hold your breath over it. You said yourself that they are very experienced programmers. At best, they've probably been told the same many times before, but kept doing the same. At worst they'll call you a hippie.

But, don't worry. You already have an idea on what the good coding practices are. As soon as you find yourself in a different situation in a team that cares about code quality these things will emerge. Better than the other way around.

Answer 3

I'm biased, but use English. For a few reasons.

1. Most developers, even if it's not their native language, know English. It's the defacto language of science. Most papers are published in English.

2. If your developers all know English to some extent, it won't exclude anybody. I work in a shop with developers from all over the world, Egypt, India, Canada, USA, Singapore, France, etc... and we all develop in English.

3. As you can see from your example, you can type the words. You don't require special characters, and phonetics to be able to type. Thus, it reduces confusion.

Answer 4

I am a Greek speaking language, too many years programmer, actually from my age of 13, and I just take a look now on many of my code to check my self if I use greeklish (that I also avoid them).

I found on my code that I use them in this cases.

1. when I do not know the english word, or not familiar with it.
2. when I am rush to write some code.
3. when the english and the greek are similar words, like "type" "typos", "seira" "serial", "idea"... etc

I never use greeklish for common words like the "User" -> Xristis, because the word "User" is used also from many libraries and this make confuse, but I found now that I review my code some words like "etisi" (αιτηση) that I am not sure how to say it in enlgish, is not a request, is not an application, is an ask for.. anyway.

I understand your problem, how can you try to learn words that actually not exist ! and there are not even help you to learn something.

I think that its their fault that mix up the language when all the involved developers do not know Greek, and you with a polite way, must find a way to tell them that this situation make your work slower and harder, and the code difficult to debug and understand.

I am against greeklish not only in programs but in Greek language also.