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Sir, Please Step Away from the ASR-33 (2010)

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Re: Sir, Please Step Away from the ASR-33 (2010)

#21

Post by sharikous »

eterevsky wrote: post #16

The best thing about using only ASCII for the main syntax is that everyone can type it with their keyboard. I think the recent fad of supporting Unicode identifiers is misguided. Of course, Unicode should be permitted in string literals, but not in the code itself. *Also I don't think Go is better than modern C++, though it might be better than C++99 which was the main standard when the article was written.

Having to do math and physics heavy work, I very much support the "fad" of having Unicode literals. "omega_0" is much worse than "ω_0" especially if you have tons of these variables.

If you don't do math it's difficult to understand, but try writing without the alphabet and expressing the same concepts. Possible but clunky

Re: Sir, Please Step Away from the ASR-33 (2010)

#22

Post by zabzonk »

eterevsky wrote: post #16

The best thing about using only ASCII for the main syntax is that everyone can type it with their keyboard. I think the recent fad of supporting Unicode identifiers is misguided. Of course, Unicode should be permitted in string literals, but not in the code itself. *Also I don't think Go is better than modern C++, though it might be better than C++99 which was the main standard when the article was written.

Slight typo: It's C++98.

Re: Sir, Please Step Away from the ASR-33 (2010)

#23

Post by zabzonk »

wutwutwutwut wrote: post #19
eterevsky wrote: post #16

The best thing about using only ASCII for the main syntax is that everyone can type it with their keyboard. I think the recent fad of supporting Unicode identifiers is misguided. Of course, Unicode should be permitted in string literals, but not in the code itself. *Also I don't think Go is better than modern C++, though it might be better than C++99 which was the main standard when the article was written.

> The best thing about using only ASCII for the main syntax is that everyone can type it with their keyboard. My keyboard doesn't have a key for NUL, BEL, VT, EOT. What kind of keyboard do you have which has buttons for these?

With vim at least, you can type them in as control-key sequences (preceded by Ctrl-V).

Re: Sir, Please Step Away from the ASR-33 (2010)

#24

Post by lucsky »

> My disappointment with Rob Pike's Go language is that the rest of the world has moved on from ASCII, but he did not.

Um, the Go reference explicitly states that "Source code is Unicode text encoded in UTF-8" [1], so I'm not sure what the hell this guy is talking about. The language itself maybe? Well contrary to the author of the article I'm really no fan of Rob Pike and I think he's a massive arrogant prick, but in this particular case he was absolutely right to be pragmatic for the language syntax and let people be stupid enough to use inaccessible characters in their source code. Which, come to think of it, actually flies in the face of the root principle of Go as stated by Pike himself, which is to shield dumb rookie Google developers from their supposed inexperience.

[1] https://golang.org/ref/spec#Source_code_representation

Re: Sir, Please Step Away from the ASR-33 (2010)

#25

Post by ggm »

lucsky wrote: post #24

> My disappointment with Rob Pike's Go language is that the rest of the world has moved on from ASCII, but he did not. Um, the Go reference explicitly states that "Source code is Unicode text encoded in UTF-8" [1], so I'm not sure what the hell this guy is talking about. The language itself maybe? Well contrary to the author of the article I'm really no fan of Rob Pike and I think he's a massive arrogant prick, but i…

This feels a bit gratuitously rude. He has strong opinions, and literally decades of experience. He is said to dislike time wasters. As one of a very small set of people who built much of the modern development stack from the ground up, it would be tedious in the extreme to have to deal with every headstrong tyro determined to make their (likely highly pedestrian, repetitive) point.

Never met him, never really dealt with him, don't see why you feel you need to denigrate him.

Re: Sir, Please Step Away from the ASR-33 (2010)

#26

Post by vyskocilm »

lucsky wrote: post #24

> My disappointment with Rob Pike's Go language is that the rest of the world has moved on from ASCII, but he did not. Um, the Go reference explicitly states that "Source code is Unicode text encoded in UTF-8" [1], so I'm not sure what the hell this guy is talking about. The language itself maybe? Well contrary to the author of the article I'm really no fan of Rob Pike and I think he's a massive arrogant prick, but i…

It's even more funny, given the fact Rob Pike co invented UTF-8 with Ken Thompson. So he must know a thing or two about Unicode.

Not using Unicode for Go syntax is a great thing.

Re: Sir, Please Step Away from the ASR-33 (2010)

#28

Post by luxxuor »

nightfly wrote: post #4

If I wanna use something like a ™ I have to google how to enter it, or just google and copy the character. I don't want any extra glyphs in my code until it's just as easy to enter (at close to full speed) as the glyphs I already have access to.

If you are on Mac you can use CTRL+CMD+Space to open the symbol picker that also allows searching for symbols. There is something similar on Windows iirc.

Re: Sir, Please Step Away from the ASR-33 (2010)

#29

Post by amelius »

bartq wrote: post #27

This will work once we have keycaps with e-ink or similar technology and this will be super cheap for everyone. Then we all will have keyboards with infinite number of characters and new chapter of typing will begin.

Another idea: let the Windows-key (I have no use for it anyway) trigger the appearance of an onscreen palette of glyphs, which you can click with the mouse.

Re: Sir, Please Step Away from the ASR-33 (2010)

#30

Post by tomxor »

> Why keep trying to cram an expressive syntax into the straitjacket of the 95 glyphs of ASCII when Unicode has been the new black for most of the past decade??

Because it must be possible to actually type syntax.

The problem is a physical one: keyboards are limited in space, we need alphabets, punctuation, a bunch of control keys, and finally we have a very small amount of space left to fit some arbitrary symbols - might as well be ASCII ones. The only way to truly break away from the ASCII table would be to start making giant non-standard keyboards... and now you have a huge inclusivity barrier, not to mention the impracticality of physically huge keyboards.

This all seems like a lot of effort and argument over something even more superficial than language syntax - they are only glyphs... how does using more and different glyphs substantially change anything?

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