Ever since setting up the Rust Meetup Hamburg I've been thinking it'd be nice to have a German-language forum in addition to this. There doesn't seem to be anything of the kind at the moment. Although I have lived in the UK for a while and am happy to read/write English, I would welcome the option of discussing Rust in my native language and think others might, too.
So I went ahead, purchased the rust-lang.de domain and set up a Discourse site at users.rust-lang.de with discoursehosting.com which is in its free first trial week but I haven't invited anyone as yet (and this is not meant to be an invite quite yet either).
As I set this up I've been increasingly wondering:
(a) Is it ok to use the rust-lang.de domain for this? Of course I initially took it precisely because it's so similar to rust-lang.org but at some point the feeling of being an imposter set in, also because I so far lack skill/determination to modify the Discourse base look and so it looks just like this site with only the logo differing slightly.
(b) Should I even be owning this domain? I'd be more than happy to transfer it to mozilla or - if that exists - some sort of Rust foundation.
(c) In order to have something on the main domain (www.)rust-lang.de I've put up a few links of stuff I'm reading but I thought it might be worth turning this into something more useful for everybody eventually. I'm not going to attempt to translate the Rust book though just perhaps keep it updated with links to German content on Rust (there isn't much as yet from what I see but no doubt that'll change).
Would welcome your thoughts.
Also, if anyone is interested in helping getting this set up, no matter which domain it ends up on, helping with admin/moderation or with a bit of a design talent (a logo that is less rubbish than Rust Programming Language would be nice) please do give me a shout.
Personally, i have the opinion that a programmer nowadays MUST write and read english and that it only helps the community when posts/tutorials/source code are in a universal language. Not everyone may agree, but well... I find it incredibly frustrating to stumble across, say, japanese content which clearly is about what i want to know, but i can't understand..
I disagree strongly. Even if you speak English safe enough for ongoing oral conversation, it might not be enough for clear writing, clear reading, especially while you are trying to solve a problem you don't understand. Localized resources help making projects approachable to people who struggle with foreign language.
Conversation in the native tongue helps a lot - conversation partners can correct misunderstandings in understanding and conversation partners are better at communicating their ideas.
I find localized resources extremely important. Q&A resources are personal business first and of community interest second.
(I used to run http://rubyforen.de and german meetups in both german and english)
I'm part of the rust-community team and founded RustBerlin.
I love this. I cannot comment on the domain and I see the issue that it could be confused with an official page providing downloads, but I also don't see that problem as a strong one in the current form.
There is also http://rustberlin.github.io, which is a bit non-loved. Would you mind if we talk and maybe move some stuff over?
You probably already can read and write some english using Rust (after all, the complete rust project is only in english, as well as the documentation).
I find people should not withdraw to some kind of safe, walled garden once the absolute minimum is done in english.
If they are forced to improve on their english skills, it's only good for their career and only good for the community. Maybe it will not be perfect english and it doesn't have to be (after all, i am german and i am quite sure my english is not perfect). But it will only improve if used!
In an international company i had several opportunities to witness code from people perfectly able to read and write english but who commented and named variables in italian, spanish, and other languages. I consider this behaviour malicious for every project, team, company, wherever a something might eventually be shared with a foreigner. Which nowadays is practically always, thanks to the Internet. I'd much rather read a colleages very poor english (and maybe correct it in in the process) then someone elses perfect italian.
TL;DR: I consider english the most important skill for every person in the IT space. Only exception are kids learning basic programming.
Edit: I do understand that this is very subjective and so, there is no right or wrong. I probably just had too much pain with this
Easy to say for English native speakers. (Even if you aren't, I've heard this many times.) This is a matter of being comfortable in a community, and for many this is very hard if the community exclusively English. Of course you don't easily realize this if you are always, immediately, comfortable.
Do you think French programmers should speak English at work in France, just because it is "IT space"? I hope not, and there's no reason to. For the same reason it is reasonable to want a native-language forum to exchange problems and ideas.
I do understand what you mean but to me there are perfectly good reasons in favour of non-English language forums...
I see my points have largely been made already by @skade and @stdsync, thx. Sorry, I'm a bit slow today, out with family and friends!,
For me it's got to the point where I speak English all day every day and I wouldn't mind getting to communicate in German more often. Now that I'm learning Rust I would welcome having a forum in German, and a smaller and different community in addition to what we have here, on reddit and elsewhere. I don't think people would generally withdraw from here as a result.
I think it could be beneficial in many ways, too, for the German Rust meetup/user group communities to highlight what's going on where and to collaborate there on larger events. That would mostly just be noise for people on here.
And thirdly, while I think programmers who don't learn English do themselves a great disservice, most just happen to pick it up as they go. A relative of mine whose native language is French is gradually improving his English while he is learning Java at the moment but if there were no French resources on Java he'd not at all be in a position to learn it until he's mastered English. To require he do it in the order English first, programming in language X second would be unnecessarily restrictive.
Thanks for the encouraging words, @skade. Yes, absolutely, let's get the content integrated. I'll be in touch.
If it turns out someone does disapprove of the use of rust-lang.de as a domain, I don't see that as a biggie. We can always move it. Or perhaps hand the domain over to Mozilla and do it within a sort of officially blessed community project.
I will just keep out of the discussion of it being good to have another forum for foreign languages (as a native German speaker I think it is bad, but I did not say that) end just say that the domain is not choosen very well in the means of browser address autocompletion.
Just image how often you will get to the wrong site by just typing "rus".
It would be better if Mozilla approved that and gave someone "control" over de.users.rust-lang.org or similar.
I like the de.users.rust-lang.org idea but for me it hasn't so far been a problem with respect to address autocompletion. I start typing rust and then it's either enter or cursor down enter. That's in Firefox. Not sure how inferior browsers handle this.
Yes, I was hoping someone from Mozilla and/or the community team might chime in (I guess @skade has!) and share a definite opinion.
I've got to say I'm mildly deflated by the 50% vote against non-English forums. Some 99% or so of content on Rust is in English and a not insignificant number of people simply do not speak it well enough to follow and must feel excluded by that fact. Besides, for many who do speak it well enough it's still less taxing and more enjoyable to converse in their native language.
But then there's also a 50% in favour here, too, and a comment from This Week in Rust 82 does give me hope: "Tutoriel Rust. - A much-needed French-language tutorial."
That's how non-English-speaking programmers feel too, about English content. There are plenty of places where people get by programming without English.
There's a wide gap between having a basic understanding of English so as to understand compiler error messages and stuff, and having enough mastery to be able to communicate advanced programming concepts with other people. There's a lot of effort required to bridge this gap. It's unreasonable to require people to do this before they can master the programming language.
As another German speaker, I do in general agree that these days without at least some technical English, you'll be at least a bit lost in the long run. But there are also lots of young people going into IT whose English is not on that level yet. Then of course there are those who don't even (yet) develop software professionally, but just as a hobby. Being accessible to those groups can have big value as well.
So at least for introductions, tutorials and the like I do see big value in translations. These are also the areas that I'd think would be easier to keep in sync across many languages.
Hehe, yes, I have already underestimated the time it'd take me to get the initial setup sorted but then it's been a good learning experience and I'd see much of what comes after that in the same spirit. Thank you very much for the offer of help, I'll be in touch.
I don't know the answer to this off hand, but obviously this is something the Rust project should have an opinion on. The core team will probably want to discuss internally.
Right now management of official Rust domains is a mess. Semi-random people own everything. We probably shouldn't do any transfers without doing some thinking about how we manage domains.
I suspect that right now, taking on any sort of responsibility for managing more forums isn't something the project itself wants to do, and using the rust-lang.* domain does imply a certain amount of officiality.
There was a similar discussion here when I posted a German-language (method names) String class here.
Let me re-iterate my ideas on this:
A) Most people are hard pressed to properly express themselves in their native language. Even more so in a foreign one. I work as a contractor for a major German corporation and most folks have very superficial English skills. Let's call it Denglish.
B) HP Germany once had one of the software engineering gurus (DeMarco or somebody like this) reviewing their processes. He was curious why Germans would write English papers mostly read by Germans. He probably also observed what I did. So he recommended using German in Germany.
C) If you want to do anything truly innovative, you must be able to write down your ideas and analysis as correctly as possible. Can you do that in a foreign language ?
So, yes please go ahead with the German language Swift forum !
I see you do not yet have PHPBB or something like that set up. I do think this would be most useful. Or can/has someone build a Rust-programmed discussion forum ?
browsers handle this.