Why Legesher?

The Reason Why

It’s absolutely okay if you’re asking yourself this question: “Why are we even building this?”

In short, we’re building Legesher because language doesn’t have to be a barrier to coding. We’re building Legesher to provide new ways for non-native English speakers to understand programming. We’re creating a new normal for worldwide teams that already tackle enough barriers in their daily collaboration.

The STOP Sign

For the native English speaker: allow me to paint you a picture.

You’re familiar with a STOP sign, right? That red hexagon with 4 white letters S, T, O, P that you see at intersections?

When you encounter that STOP sign, you’re expected to:

1. Come to a complete stop
2. Look both ways for oncoming traffic
3. If clear, proceed with caution
4. If not, wait until traffic clears

Now consider this: Imagine one day you wake up, grab your passport, and decide to drive into a new country for a new experience, a new opportunity. The second you cross the border, the ways of navigation completely change. You still see a red hexagon with white letters. But the white letters aren’t S, T, O, P. In this country, the instructions on the hexagons are completely unfamiliar to you. With unfamiliar symbols, you attempt to make your best guess at their meaning.

Right now in the world of software development, we’re full of STOP signs that have the same four English letters no matter where you are in the world, no matter what language you natively speak. For much of the world, they see that stop sign with letters completely unfamiliar to them.

The Problem

Only about 4% of the world’s population are native English speakers. Yet every major programming language requires English:

• def to define a function
• print to display output
• if, else, while, for to control flow
• True, False, None for values
• import, return, class for structure

For billions of people, learning to code means first learning enough English to understand these keywords, before they can even begin to think about logic, algorithms, or building something meaningful.

The Bridge

But it doesn’t have to be this way.

Language doesn’t have to be a barrier. Language can be a bridge.

With Legesher, a Spanish-speaking student writes definir instead of def. A Japanese developer writes もし instead of if. An Arabic programmer writes طباعة instead of print. The code runs the same. It collaborates the same. It’s stored the same way in git.

The only thing that changes is that the developer can think in their own language while they code.

What We Believe

• Everyone deserves access to programming, regardless of what language they speak
• Learning should happen in your native language first. Translation to English can come later (or never)
• Collaboration shouldn’t require a shared spoken language. Legesher’s git integration means teammates can each code in their own language while working on the same project
• Programming keywords are just words, and words can be translated

Legesher creates the ability for people to learn and develop code in their own native language, without getting stuck trying to understand foreign symbols and slang. That’s what we’re doing here.