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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)

#31
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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).

But then the statement is incorrect. I can write all of Unicode using keyboard sequences as well.

People from US seems to have a strong fetishes with ASCII.

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

#32

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

I respectfully disagree with this. I do a lot of maths-heavy work, but for me in languages (not Julia!) being able to quickly write the LaTeX names for symbols is more than enough. It's also much quicker, and easier to search for when reading someone elses' code.

I personally find it also helpful to make the distinction between the maths and its implementation, though I accept that others would vehemently disagree iwth me.

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

#33
post #25
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…

> This feels a bit gratuitously rude

Agreed, and I 100% believe that meeting him in person would most likely change my mind. I also 100% believe that he has every right to be an "arrogant prick" for all his contributions and achievements to the field. But that doesn't make him any less insufferable, unfortunately.

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

#34

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.

But "everyone" doesn't have the same keyboard nor does everyone speak the same language. ASCII is not a universal character set and treating it as such is nothing short of cultural imperialism: "If it's good enough for us, it's good enough for everyone".

Artificial limits on language and characters sets might sound simple to you but it introduces a lot of complexity for others. Unicode code solves that problem with not too much overhead.

Also, just to point out, this assumption is exactly why diversity in tech matters so much.

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

#35
post #25
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…

I understand where you're coming from, but in the case of Rob Pike I get the impression that he enjoys having the reputation of a contrarian, and is not above trolling once in a while. Just look at the history section of the Mark V. Shaney wiki page.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_V._Shaney

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

#36

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.

But "everyone" doesn't have the same keyboard nor does everyone speak the same language. ASCII is not a universal character set and treating it as such is nothing short of cultural imperialism: "If it's good enough for us, it's good enough for everyone". Artificial limits on language and characters sets might sound simple to you but it introduces a lot of complexity for others. Unicode code solves that problem with n…

Not sure why you're downvoted; it's simply true that ASCII is not universal. The "A" in ASCII stands for American.

I am a monolingual English speaker but I think I should be able to write ÷, ≤ and ≥ in my Go code, and I think I should be able to do maths using π.

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

#37

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

I disagree. Instead of writing one letter variable names, one could do the hard work of naming things properly, which software developers often do. Instead of going with one letter or the name of that letter as variable name, which tells your fellow non-mathematicians exactly nothing about what it contains, one could put in the effort and make the code readable.

Using these one letter variables forces the reader of the code to either be already familiar with the concept, which that letter refers to, or keep the whole calculation in their head, until the final result, to hope, that they then can make sense of it. It is implicitly requiring outside knowledge. It is shutting out many potential readers of the code.

It might still be saved/helped though, if good prose comments are given, that help the reader understand the meaning of the one letter symbols. Whenever I have seen this one letter code salad, I have seen few if any comments, as if the author of the code expects me to magically know, what each symbol stands for.

Lets say omega was a vector of weights. Why not name it "weights"? That is much better naming than "omega" or that character, that most cannot easily input and need to copy paste from somewhere.

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

#38
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I understand where you're coming from, but in the case of Rob Pike I get the impression that he enjoys having the reputation of a contrarian, and is not above trolling once in a while. Just look at the history section of the Mark V. Shaney wiki page. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_V._Shaney

That's a bit different to how he has to deal with contemporary compsci nerds. And, it's very old. We're talking about a 40 year old story.

I attended my share of Unix User Group meetings. All of the names had people ride point for them at drink time, adoration is tedious.

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

#39
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.

For what it's worth, it seems to be a default option in Linux. xUbuntu, for me, went into Settings, Keyboard, Layout, unchecked Use System Defaults, selected a compose key (I picked Right Alt)

Was able to do a TM by holding shift and right alt, typing TM and letting go of shift and right alt. ™

Punctuation and vowels result in accents: Û Ü Ä Ö Ô Þ Ŷ Ô ⸘ ⸘ Æ «» ¿¡ ¨ ¯--_ ⋄

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

#40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I respectfully disagree with this. I do a lot of maths-heavy work, but for me in languages (not Julia!) being able to quickly write the LaTeX names for symbols is more than enough. It's also much quicker, and easier to search for when reading someone elses' code. I personally find it also helpful to make the distinction between the maths and its implementation, though I accept that others would vehemently disagree iw…

Maybe there could be a middle ground. For math-heavy applications, the editor could implement ligatures same as Fira-Code and the latex name would render as the symbol until you put a cursor on it.
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