All the Chinese programmers I know can understand some English - especially enough to write code, though many have taken English classes as well. It's possible my selection sample is biased, since the Chinese programmers I know are somehow related to this industry.

FYI: they use keyboards that have both Chinese and English characters on them, like: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keyboard_layout#Chinese

I doubt it would be that hard. You'd just have to memorize the keywords in the programming language. You don't need to speak English to write code, although it does help.

Memorizing keywords in a language you know/understand is really much different to just memorizing.

They would know the meanings for most of the names (classes, functions, operators) even if they don't know English at all.

I would presume they use a keyboard.

On a more serious note, as a native Finnish-speaker, I've always written all of my code and comments in English. It's just so much simpler than any other alternative I can think of.

But you DO speak english.