One more struggle, and I am free
在我上大学的时候，除去普通的英语课程，专业课程里还有一门《计算机英语》。当时大家的普遍认为，普通的“英语”是过四六级用的，《计算机英语》才是专业真正需要的。
等到工作了，我发现很多人都持这样的观点：程序员应该学好英语。这样才能方便地查找资料，迅速地学习最新的知识。换句话说，“学好英语”在很多人看来，就是是“学好专业英语”——这项要求已经很高了，我曾经在《程序员要怎样学英语》里提到，不但要能看懂文档，还要知道“黑屏”是blank screen，“死机”是system halt，否则查找就会很费力。
但是今天我想强调的是，对程序员来说，学好“英语”而不是“专业英语”是非常重要的。只学好专业英语，看得了技术文档，但那一大堆专业术语和概念可能会像陨石一样，没来由地坠落下来，只能生吞活剥地硬背。如果学好英语，你才会有融会贯通的感觉，知道那些术语和概念原来是从地里长出来的，底下连着根茎。
理论上说，在自由的社会里，人是可以自由选择的，所以一定做出自己真正喜欢的选择。但现实往往是，在你还没有完全的选择能力的时候，就必须接受很多东西——比如读书就是这样。但是读书到底有什么好处，清楚这个问题的恐怕就不多了。
从小，长辈就跟我们说：好要好读书，读书才有出息。这是大家常说的话，当然还有不常说的话：不读书，长大了就只能去扫马路、拖板车…… 但是我一直比较好奇：好看的书不让多看，不好看的书又被催着看。很多时候说是要“读书”，其实希望你读的只是教科书。这样读下去，到底能有什么“出息”呢？
我刚刚工作的时候，面试官曾经跟我说：好好干两年，可以迅速从程序员成长为工程师。当时我觉得太诧异了，从很多招聘启示来看，“程序员”不就等于“工程师”吗，只是“工程师”更好听一些而已。等我工作久了，才知道“程序员”和“工程师”真的是不一样的——程序员只写程序，工程师写能在现实世界中创造价值的程序。
可惜，很多软件开发人员未必清楚两者的差别，甚至做了很久也只算程序员而不算严格意义上的工程师。所以我就自己的观察和经验，谈谈程序员和工程师的差别。
早上一个朋友在朋友圈里跟我说：“上次你推荐的《信息简史》和《知识的边界》两本书，我觉得很不错。”
这条消息让我比较差异，首先我并没有“推荐”过这两本书，只是在公众号之前的文章里提到过；其次此人学历不高，是个生意人，经常生意忙得不可开交。就这样一位朋友，竟然会在一个周末的早上告诉你，他读完了你提到过的《信息简史》和《知识的边界》。而且我知道，下次见面的时候，我们一定可以聊很多有关的话题，就像之前夜里一边飞驶在沪杭高速上，一边聊科斯定理一样。
Having opened this cookbook, you are probably eager to inject some of the ungainly strings of parentheses and question marks you find in its chapters right into your code. If you are ready to plug and play, be our guest: the practical regular expressions are listed and described in Chapters 4 through 9.
But the initial chapters of this book may save you a lot of time in the long run. For instance, this chapter introduces you to a number of utilities-some of them created by the authors, Jan and Steven-that let you test and debug a regular expression before you bury it in code where errors are harder to find. And these initial chapters also show you how to use various features and options of regular expressions to make your life easier, help you understand regular expressions in order to improve their performance, and learn the subtle differences between how regular expressions are handled by different programming languages-and even different versions of your favorite programming language.
“BRITAIN does not dream of some cosy, isolated existence on the fringes of the European Community,” asserted Margaret Thatcher in 1988. Now, increasingly, it does. Opinion polls show that most Britons are in favour of leaving the European Union. Baroness Thatcher’s Conservative Party, which took Britain into Europe four decades ago, is divided between those who long for an arm’s-length relationship and those who want to walk out. The second camp is swelling.
Even the fiercest British critics of the EU are astonished by the speed at which things are moving. Parliamentary rebellions over Europe are becoming easier and easier to organise. Euroscepticism is hardening in the Conservative Party, in much the same way as social conservatism has gone from being a powerful current in America’s Republican Party to an intolerant orthodoxy. The United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP), which wants to leave the EU, has abruptly moved from the political margins to the mainstream. A referendum on Britain’s membership of the EU now seems a matter of timing.
Continental Europeans are surprised too—and annoyed. They are bewildered that the British should be talking of leaving a club that many believe has shifted decisively in a free-trading, Anglo-Saxon direction in the past two decades. They also resent the way Britain seems to be using the threat of an exit as a bargaining tool, especially at a time when the euro is in crisis. As they see it, Britain wants to carve out a privileged place for itself in the European club, where it can enjoy free trade without any of the other membership rules. In Berlin and Rome, political leaders argue that Britain needs to make up its mind once and for all: does it want to be in or out?
Once home to fishermen and farmers, modern Hong Kong is a teeming, commercially-vibrant metropolis where Chinese and Western influences fuse.
The former British colony became a special administrative region of China in 1997, when Britain’s 99-year lease of the New Territories, north of Hong Kong island, expired.
Hong Kong is governed under the principle of “one country, two systems” under which China has agreed to give the region a high degree of autonomy and to preserve its economic and social systems for 50 years from the date of the handover.
The last two months have seen some astonishing bidding in auctions of Chinese treasures.
Record after record has fallen away as newly wealthy collectors from mainland China have piled into salerooms in London, New York and Hong Kong, anxious to bring home their imperial cultural patrimony.
The market for Chinese art works has strengthened considerably over the past five years, and the high prices have drawn out a number of masterpieces from old collections in Europe and America.
However, there is a danger of sellers becoming over-confident, even greedy.
A close examination of some of the lots that have achieved record prices since early October shows that success cannot be taken for granted.
图灵出版公司的编辑们在审稿及译者交流中收集了这些例句，它们的毛病比较典型。为避免其他译者犯同同样的错误，本节会详细指出问题所在，并给出修改之后的翻译。
原文：A moment’s reflection will convince the reader that it is extremely undesirable to change the pointers in every reference to A just because the first element of A is being deleted.
译文：略加考虑，读者就会相信，非常不希望仅因为删除A的第一个元素就改变对A的所有引用。
原文整句话很长，译者将其分为三个短句是正确的处理。但有两个单词的翻译不到位，一个是convince，一般做“说服、使相信”解，但“相信”的对象一般是某种陈述，所以这里取“使清楚明白/使认同”的意思更合适；另一个是undesirable，翻译为“不希望”比较勉强，“希望”一般必须是主体发出的动作，而这里的“非常不希望”没有明确主体，所以翻译为“讨厌、麻烦/不可取”更合适。另外，the pointers in every reference中的pointers在译文中漏掉了，这不是小问题，因为指针和引用是完全不同的概念。
改译：读者想想就会明白，如果仅仅删掉A的第一个元素，就得修改A的所有引用之处的指针，这种做法是极为麻烦的。
稍微了解一点科学的人都知道，人类所使用的自然语言是不够严格精确的。这些语言既有规则（譬如句子要有完整的结构，英语中过去发生的动作要用过去式），又没有规则（譬如不规则动词，以及某些约定俗成而“毫无道理”的搭配）。从某种意义上说，语言的活力和创造力，就在于能够灵活游走于这种有/无规则的矛盾之间，“搭配”出不曾出现过，但意义完整的词句。
比如近年来出现的“积淀”、“积弱”之类的词语，就是这种搭配的结果；语句的例子就更多，比如“漂亮得一塌糊涂”，按常理“漂亮”和“一塌糊涂”似乎相距十万八千里，但是在某些情况下搭配使用，读者却觉得“写得很棒”。在阅读这样的词句时，读者依据的是母语的本能，而且这种本能是有规矩的，不能随意乱来。“漂亮得一塌糊涂”说得通，“漂亮得难以收拾”就不通了；“千锤百炼”可以调换成“百炼千锤”，但“千炼百锤”就非常别扭了。