I was working with Codex on a CQRS architectural issue, which was new for me, when something unexpected happened. Most of my experience has been in CRUD-style applications, where you read and write to the same model and the mental model is fairly straightforward: one source of truth, one path in and out. CQRS splits that apart. There are separate models for reading and writing, sometimes with events in between. I was in that stage of debugging where your head starts to get fuzzy, and you start questioning your career choice. Without thinking, I typed, “No entiendo” (“I don’t understand” in Spanish), and Codex responded in Spanish too. I didn’t change any settings or give it a prompt. It just noticed and switched languages.
No Entiendo, and Then I Did.
Codex switching to Spanish made sense, given how LLMs work, but I didn’t expect the conversation suddenly to be so much easier to read. Everything felt more direct and less wordy. Since Spanish is my first language, that made sense, but I didn’t expect the difference to be that noticeable! This made me realize something I’d noticed before but never put into words: it’s easier for me to work through a difficult architectural pattern in my first language.
Mental Cost is Real.
There’s a real mental cost to working through complex ideas in a second language, even if you’re fluent. When I’m deep into something like figuring out a fix for a race condition in CQRS, a part of my effort in English goes into the language itself. I have to parse sentence structure, translate technical terms, and make sure I’m using the right words. That’s extra work. It might be small, but it’s there, and it takes away from the focus I need to keep the architecture in my mind.
In Spanish, that extra effort seems to disappear. The words don’t get in the way anymore. The mental energy I would have spent on translation (even if subconsciously) now goes straight to understanding the pattern.
I was curious to see if this was a thing, and I stumbled across a study in which researchers observed bilingual brains solving math problems in two languages. The harder the problem, the more the second language had to work for it, lighting up extra regions of the brain that the first language skipped entirely. Not exactly CQRS, but it’s a pretty neat echo of the same thing: the harder the problem gets, the more your second language seems to cost you.
It’s a Resource, not a Deficit.
Having two languages means having two different ways to turn a concept over and look at it. Sometimes English gets me there first, and sometimes Spanish does. Sometimes switching between them mid-thought is exactly what breaks a problem open, in a way that staying in one language the whole time wouldn’t. It’s a resource, not a deficit! I just don’t always remember I have it until I stumble into it by accident, as I did here.
Here’s How I’m Using Being Bilingual to My Advantage.
Debugging something hard usually means reaching for more than one tool, each doing something different. Pairing with someone gives you real-time judgment. It means there’s someone who can catch a wrong assumption the second you say it out loud or push back before you go down the wrong path. Documentation gives you the authoritative version, the thing that’s correct regardless of how confused either of you currently is. And sometimes, what actually gets a concept to click isn’t a new tool at all; it’s changing the language you’re thinking in.
Switching to Spanish did for me what neither pairing nor documentation had fully done. It cleared the noise that sat between me and the pattern itself. None of these approaches replaces the others. I still needed my pair to get as far as we did. The language switch was just what closed the remaining gap. Now I do this on purpose. When I run into something really hard to figure out with Codex, I switch to Spanish, either in my head or right in the chat, and talk it through. It’s not that I understand English less; it’s that Spanish costs me nothing to process, which leaves more room to focus on the real problem.
If you’re bilingual and you code, try it next time you’re stuck. Switch languages, even mid-conversation, and see if the fog clears. It’s a small change, but it’s made a big difference in how I work through my own thinking.
Find Your Version of Bilingual.
For me, that’s English and Spanish. For you, it might not be two different languages at all! It might be two different ways of approaching the same problem. In the age of agentic development, it’s easy to get mentally fatigued just reading LLM output line by line. So switch modes: grab a whiteboard and sketch the flow with a teammate until it clicks visually instead of verbally. Or if you’re more confident in a different programming language, work through the logic there first, then translate it back to the one you’re actually using.
The specifics don’t matter as much as the instinct: when something isn’t landing, don’t just push harder in the same direction. Find the version of “switching to Spanish” that works for you.