Question: This question is for anyone who has learned programming in a Spanish speaking country.

Seeing as though the key words for programming languages like Java, C, Python etc are all in English I have a couple of questions:

* Do courses in Spanish speaking countries expect some knowledge of
English as a prerequisite?
* Do they teach you what English keywords mean?
* Are you taught to use English names for variables, classes, methods
etc or Spanish ones (Confusing?!)?
* Lastly, can you get/do you use, things like Javadocs in Spanish?

Thanks = )

Answer: 
I learned to program in Spanish, in Peru.

> 
> Do courses in Spanish speaking countries expect some knowledge of English as a prerequisite?
> 
> 
> 

No, they don't expect you to know English. I'm very sure on this point. Sometimes even teachers don't know English. On the other hand, most people can read documentation in English, sometimes with the help of Google Translator (which is very good for technical stuff). The best programmer at my work doesn't know English and he has more than 16 years of experience. Sure, he knows the meaning of a lot of words.

> 
> Do they teach you what English keywords mean?
> 
> 
> 

I learned by reading magazines about programming written in Spanish (this kind of magazine was very popular in the 90s). They don't mention the translation but explain the use and give examples ("IF sirve para expresar sentencias condicionales"). I give lectures on "Scientific programming" (MATLAB and R) and I do mention the meaning of English words, but just the first time. 

> 
> Are you taught to use English names for variables, classes, methods etc or Spanish ones (Confusing?!)?
> 
> 
> 

For work, I use names in Spanish and comments in English. I think is a bit confusing if you share the code with non-Spanish speakers, I'm trying to improve that for lots of reasons, particularly because I don't like to avoid "tildes". Also, I'm using Java for my PhD and my advisor does the opposite: variables/methods/classes in English, comments in French (she's French). For lectures, I use variables and function/methods names and comments in Spanish cause knowledge of English is not a requisite to learn programming (and for most people programming it's hard enough).

> 
> Lastly, can you get/do you use, things like Javadocs in Spanish?
> 
> 
> 

I learned java a couple of years ago using books in Spanish. There are very good documentation in Spanish to learn for most programming languages. But when looking for help in internet, It's almost sure it will be in English. Now I prefer to use documentation in English, but mostly because I really want to improve my English. As a final remark, all students who do internships at my lab are encouraged to learn English and we provide them documentation in English, despite there are good translations in Spanish.
This is from a long time ago. After I learned to program in ANSII Basic I once started reading a book called "Basic in Spanish" I threw it away the very first day since it didn't make sense to relearn every single keyword in Spanish.