What if we made DEV.to polyglot ?

English is the lingua franca of programming but the DEV community is polyglot

Should I write in English or in my mother tongue ?

I think many of us here have asked us this question.

But the answer is actually obvious

Writing is its own reward

Social Media and its vanity metrics everywhere taught us the wrong lessons.

Writing, even just for yourself, on paper or on your computer, is always a useful exercice.

Writing in english is a great idea for your career, for too many reasons to write down.

Writing in your mother tongue is also super positive, because at playing with mother tongue is actually a very big deal in life.

Also don’t worry about the DRY principle here. You write for a different audience, with different references, a different mindset.

Translating is a creative act.

No one will be mad at you for writing in a language they don’t understand

Most people will ignore you, but that’s what we already do most of the time.
It’s absolutely fine.

Cross posting is good

Editor Note: I will now cross-post all my english and french content on DEV.to and on my website https://desviesdedevs.jmfayard.dev/

That’s how I now start all my posts on DEV.to
I do that to get the best of both world.
On my substack, I have a small but great audience that likes my posts and receive them by email.
Even if nobody interacted with my content on DEV.to, the platform has a SEO strength that I will absolutely never have.

But people do interact on DEV.to

Here are some proof that you can have readers in your mother tongue

A bilingual brazilian portuguese – english interview

A read who has read 4 ways to judo mansplaining and then went on to read 4 prises de judo contre le mansplaining

A cool comment in esperanto

A german reader who take the time and effort to answer me in french

I rest my case : write in all your languages

The emoji convention

I suggest to follow my convention to start the title with the “language emoji” (actually country emoji) to make us all visible

And follow your language tags

In no particular order

Merci beaucoup – muchas gracias – grazie – danke sehr – obrigado – arigatou gozaimasou

In particular to @ingosteinke @michaeltharrington @lelepg @morgannadev @pachicodes @axel584

What Should You Do Next ?

A thousand miles journey begins with a single step.

Prends un article que tu as déjà écrit. Publie le sur DEV.to avec l’emoji qui va bien. Fais en la pub dans les commentaires ci-dessous. Comme ça tu peux être sûrε qu’au moins une personne va le lire.

Ich vermute, du hast bestimmt irgendwann in deinem Leben, etwas interesantes auf Deutsch geschrieben ? Nimm den text und veröffentlicht es auf DEV.to. Dann mach mal ein bisschen Werbung in die Kommentare

Busca un articulo bueno qué ya has escrito en otro lugar. Publicalo aqui en DEV.to. Y después mandame el enlace en los comentarios. Asi qué pudedes estar seguro qué almenos una persona lo lee.