Software projects that want to maximize their chances for sharing and reuse should use English when deciding on function names, variables and code comments. They need to make the software adaptable to other languages, says Ramón Cahenzli, a Swiss software developer working for the Zürich University of the Arts (ZHdK). “Don’t think you can do internationalisation later. You’ll end up making changes hundreds of times.”
Cahenzli is one of the developers working on Leihs, the system used by the university to manage booking loans and rentals of equipment for video and photography, audio recording devices, computers and auxiliaries such as tripods and cables.
Leihs is used by at least 4 universities and colleges in Switzerland, and in several other countries, including Austria, Germany, Sweden and the United Kingdom.
The Leihs equipment booking system is made available by the university as open source. For Cahenzli, this is a matter of principle: “It was paid for by taxpayers, so the software should be given back to them.”
No routine
Speaking at the Fosdem conference in Brussels on 1 February, Cahenzli explained what it took to make it a succesful open source project. “If you want contributions from others, write it in English”, he says. Leihs was originally written in German, making it harder for non-German speakers to understand the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subroutine procedure names. Eight years ago, Cahenzli and colleagues rewrote the program, using English for all functions and subroutines.
Cahenzli warned against using the very latest version of software libraries and development tools. In the first years, Leihs relied on rapidly evolving libraries and tools, which made it hard for the users to upgrade one part of their system without breaking another.
No bedlam
To avoid confusion, all those working on the project need to agree on the names and definitions, he said. “Developers call it prolongation and then management talks about an extension. This term developers later use for a plug-in”, Cahenzli explains. “These things can cause chaos.” Apart from seeing the benefits of getting code contributions from a wider community of developers, Cahenzli says, “management needs to understand that this will take time”.
More information:
About Leihs
Leihs at Fosdem 2015
Presentation by Ramón Cahenzli (PDF)