A for loop and other syntax keywords are barely the only English people have to understand in programming. One could say that these could just as well be arbitrary symbols, and programmers would just memorize them. But think of all the concepts named in English such as exception, factory, facade, adapter, interface, iterator, needle, haystack, constructor, queue... you name it. Not to mention documentation. So yeah, some English is mandatory, even if we're not able to communicate properly. In some projects though it's not uncommon to use local language for the domain while still keeping technical concepts in English, like getAnniversaire() or PersonneTable.