What language do you think in?

The other day I was having a casual conversation with my manager when he asked "What language do you think in". As always, the first thought was "English". Many years ago, I did do an exercise to consciously observe/note/understand what language I use to form those thoughts and then translate to the required language. Back then, the answer was "English"... probably because the exposure to Hindi/Marathi was restricted to the classes in school and occasionally with relatives who weren't comfortable with English. This of course, does not mean I wasn’t confortable with Hindi, or that I didn’t appreciate the language. For the record it’s a beautiful language!

Every language for that matter has its own beauty and certain thoughts can only be expressed in that language. The second part of the previous statement is what I learnt in the later years of my life! Some part of spoken language is not like engineering drawing where you can think up plan and elevation views in first angle and translate them to third angle :)

Today, the previous paragraph compels me to think that I now I don't think in only one language, but in a good mix of both Hindi and English... though I'm still sceptical. So I turned to Google Baba for help! It didn't solve the problem at hand, but I stumbled on a rather interesting article, which talks about thinking in terms of a "programming" language! What really intrigued me was, towards the end the write-up says,

So, what language do you think in? Is it the same one that you're currently being paid to use? If not, you are not as efficient as you could be. And your code may be horribly inefficient, too.

I wonder if I can apply that my work and re-word it as "When you analyze code, do you think in terms of RTRT scripting? If not, the scripts you write may not be as efficient as you are paid to write". Sounds scary!

On a not-so-side note, here's another interesting article I came across on the same site. The crux of the article could be summed up by,

In short, he said that it is important for managers (and I would suggest, for all employees and consultants) to reset their opinions about the team members every 6 months or so. Primarily, his point being that people can and do change, but we often latch onto our early impressions and never give them the benefit of a new assessment.

And I'll sign off, wishing you all a very happy 26th January and a happy happy happy holiday ;)