rasmafazi

I see. I just looked at the HTML excerpts, so, I thought it was about something generic. I am ok with translated games. I am not ok with translated math, though. It's like the localization of the glibc library. It inflates the size of the binary, while nobody that I know, would want to see vernacular in the commandline terminal. I would think of it as a bug. Time to move to musl or dietlibc!

I can only emphasize that vernacular indeed has its place, if only to build local identity and belongingness. So, I am not advocating to abolish it. As I said, I speak vernacular with my own children, and they speak it with the kids of the neighbours.

However, if you do a serious subject, which is always global, but you do it in vernacular, you are missing out on the virtual global conversations that really matter. It will inevitably force your own contributions to the field to become sub-standard.

France recently decreed that they will prosecute people who post "terrorist" opinions on the internet in French. Of course, France will surely expand their action radius and seek to police any kind of subject, in order to control the "narrative", and make sure that it is favourable to what the powers that be, want you to believe; in line with what they have been doing for ages with newspapers and television.

The UK also want to do that but they face the enormous obstacle of English-language opinions posted from the USA, which are protected by substantial first-amendment free speech provisions. According to Brandenburg versus Ohio, even advocating the violent overthrow of the state, is firmly protected speech. Don't ever say a thing like that in vernacular, because the local-language government may seek to arrest you. Hence, you can expect a much freer discussion in English than in French, since it is unencumbered by national-state regulations that curtail possibly unpopular or anti-government speech. I can pretty much say whatever I want in English. Don't try that in Polish, German, French, Chinese or any other local vernacular.

Well, in their own interest, it may be better to bite the bullet, and learn English.

I ran into my own first book on programming at the end of the eighties, when I was fourteen. It was an old photocopy of Borland Turbo Pascal, in English. There was no translation available in vernacular. So, either I gave up on programming, or else I just had to get used to reading these things in English. Later on, programming became my full-time profession. If I hadn't done the effort of doing what it takes, and figure out English, today I would probably be queuing for unemployment benefits or another social handout. My kids would now be begging in the streets, instead of happily enjoying their costly private tutor and cosy private school. The kids obviously understand vernacular, but the classes are firmly in English, if only, because the other parents also know what time it is. The false beliefs and pagan gods of vernacularity make it so that the rich are getting richer, while from the poor, even the little they have, will be taken away from them.

National institutions have indeed begun their long slide into irrelevance. Ray Kurzweil, a big shot at Google, already wrote about that. Anything that existed before the widespread commercialization of the internet cannot remain the same, after. I am waiting for news of the inevitable to break loose. A group of disgruntled people setting up internet infrastructure to literally organize the decimation of state officials. They will end up dying like flies. As soon as the first guys do that, there will be no stopping it. The national state uses force to enforce its views, while they no longer have a credible monopoly on the use of force.

Sometimes you just have to bite the bullet. For interesting subjects, which always have global reach, the virtual conversations are conducted in English. There is also a place for vernacular -- it is part of people's cultural identity -- but not in a formal knowledge setting. English is a bit like Latin used to be: the language of knowledge, technology, and business. If the subject has global reach, you will miss out on the interesting bits of knowledge, simply because you are trying to do it in vernacular. Doing anything in vernacular, will just lock you up in a small and uninteresting national silo. Nothing of any interest is national. But yes, I use vernacular. I also speak it with my kids, but I don't read it -- unless it is poetry or literature -- and I don't use it in software or in business.

That is mostly a problem in the USA. You could get your healthcare in places like the Philippines and save 95% of the bill.

I have made way more money from my bitcoin capital gains than from anything else I did for the last 3 years.

I have had a few customers from Nigeria and I also worked for 6 years with a Nigerian programmer, who was my sub-contractor on dozens of usually smaller projects. It all worked out perfectly fine. Nobody ever complained. It was great business. Not everybody in Nigeria is into these scamzillas. ;-)

VCs drag you into mainstream orthodoxies in order to be able to do an IPO on Wall Street. With ICOs around, who would put up with VCs again?