01
Subtitles, not a rewrite
You read and write in your own language, but the file on disk stays plain English — real Python, real JavaScript. It runs everywhere, and your team, your version control, and any AI see exactly what they expect.
About NADA
Code in the language
you already think in.
NADA exists for one stubborn reason: programming is the only discipline we never bothered to translate. Books are translated. Films are subtitled. Code still asks most of the planet to learn English first. We think that doorway should never have been there.
The mission
The barrier was never the logic.
It was the words.
Capable, curious people quit coding in the first week — not because the ideas were too hard, but because the words on the screen were in a language no one had ever taught them. English was standing in the doorway.
Our mission is to take it out of the way. Not by dumbing anything down, and not by forking the world's code into a hundred incompatible dialects — but by letting you read, write, and run real, standard code in the language you think in. The same file a team in San Francisco ships is the one a student in Jakarta learns on. Nothing in between.
How NADA works
Subtitles for your code.
Like subtitles on a film, the bytes don't change — everyone just follows along in their own language. Here's what that actually means.
02
The whole vocabulary, not just keywords
Keywords were never the hard part. NADA translates the standard library and the thousands of packages everyone imports — the real wall of English a beginner hits on line one.
03
Reversible, and it fails safe
The bytes never change, so the translation is fully reversible. And when NADA is ever unsure of a word, it leaves the English in place — it fails safe, never to something wrong.
On disk · plain English
console.log(items.length) You read · your language
コンソール.ログ(items.長さ) Not just keywords — the standard library and the packages everyone imports translate too. Your own names, strings, and numbers stay exactly as written.
PHOTO: the founder portrait, ~1:1, ≥800×800, warm/candid (teaching or at a desk)
From the founder
I taught software engineering for [TO CONFIRM: years] years.
I watched capable, curious people — people who could clearly think and build — quit in the first week. Not because the ideas were too hard. Because the words on the screen were in a language no one had ever taught them. English was standing in the doorway.
NADA is the tool I wished I could hand every one of them: read the code, write the code, and ask an AI about it — all in the language you already think in. The barrier is just… gone.
If that doorway was ever in your way, this is for you.
[TO CONFIRM: name] · founder, software-engineering teacher
Two halves of one project
An open standard, and the product that funds it.
NADA is deliberately split in two, so the part the world depends on can never be locked away.
The NADA Foundation
nadalang.org
Stewards the open NADA language standard and the language data behind it — released CC-BY so anyone, anywhere, can build on it. The vocabulary of code in 130+ languages belongs to everyone.
Visit the Foundation ↗NADA Build
nada.build
The commercial product built on that open standard: a polished IDE, free plugins for VS Code, Cursor & Zed, and NADA Build AI. The polished app is what funds the open standard — every subscription keeps the language data free.
See what we offer →A commercial product of the NADA project. NADA™.
If that doorway was ever in your way, this is for you.
The plugins, every language, and the basics are free forever. Start where you are — keep your editor, add your language, and write your first real line of code today.