Since Joel's put a new push on the multilingual thing and put them on a wiki, do you think JOS will see a new influx of non-english-speakers?

Philo

interesting question.

Im betting not unless he adds forums specifically for that purpose.

English is so clearly the language of the current set that I doubt many people would try any of the others.

Somebody should take that recent Chewbacca post and translate it...hehe.

Or Yoda speak or something.

-1 for JoS.

Tell you this as an English-speaker-wannabe:

* to write English at the top level that you guys can is very hard, so there are mainly two ways about it: one should write anyway and give a damn about what others will think of his style (me! I am improving as time goes on, but it's hard, still.); one should lurk and avoid the shame (this one will improve, eventually.).

So, considering that most folks are lurkers, it doesn't matter as much if they come and go, because they contribute very little to the general stress of the regulars. :-)

whereabouts are you from Lost?

I'm from Brazil. Love here. The biggest software company here is maybe Microsiga:
http://www.microsiga.com/

Most of the IT around here is boring. So I need to join you guys for fresh air. I can't understand how people who are supposed to work with technology don't try to get better at English. My position is that the better programmers need to know English, and I told that to a cousin who is coursing an equivalent of the Computer Science that you have (it's amazing that such a course exists where he lives, by the way. It's totally and completely amazing. IT studies are spreading madly around the world.) I told him to join the government after he gets his degree and to not try to be a programmer.

My first computer was a Sharp MSX Hotbit on which I wrote my first lines of BASIC. Maybe I was 13 around the time. Ever since I couldn't forget about computers. And here I'm, struggling to create something interesting.

Lost, your English writing is very good.  If you don't mind, I'll give you tips on two minor mistakes in your post. 

"Love here" should be "I love it here". In a very informal setting you might get away with "Love it here", leaving out the "I". But I would never use that form.

"...a cousin who is coursing an equivalent of the Computer Science" should be "...a cousin who is studying an equivalent of the Computer Science..."

I hope that helps.

I sincerely appreciate your tips. Thanks.

May be I'm just being crazy here but I think Joel's idea is not getting more non-English speakers to the website.

I think it is similar to what’s said in the following link:

http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2005/10/bens_insight.html

Yale University gets cheques for paltry sums of $3000 or so from alumni while their endowment earned around $3 billion. Since donors are more likely to do other things which the university really wants from them.

In a similar line, people can contribute money or their time and effort for someone. So people have to do some contribution. There have been posts trying to induce people to make the effort. One had to purchase the movie on the software project by interns though the cost was very less. The article drafts are given, which was never done before, so that there are more chances that people discuss the topic. People discuss the articles anyway but now even someone who would be a little hesitant to start a topic would do so. I see the translation also something which falls in the same line.

It’s funny that Joel put his stuff into a Wiki: Joel mentioned that the whole translation business was a way of testing his (fogcreek's) products with multiple languages - now that wouldn't make sense any more.