He's a hand polisher at the granite shop we work at. He's been doing it for 8 years since he came to Canada from Iran. He needs to get some kind of highschool equivalent but ended up in an arranged marriage with children and had to sponsor her and his parents to come over.

It sucks he's a great guy and one of the hardest working people I know. He also blames his english. I've heard a lot of people with English as a second language use that as an excuse and, like him, it's usually from people who tend to speak and write English better than a lot of native English speakers I've met.

Since then I've offered to show him some of the machine work I do and have tried to explain more about programming the machines to him. He seems excited to learn so I think he'll enjoy stuff he can learn at his own pace.

The funny thing is I've actually learned a lot of things about computer science written by Iranians or other people who English was not their first language. It's a barrier but not as much as i've heard so many people make it out to be especially if you know enough to read, write and communicate.