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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)

#71

Post by lowbloodsugar »

arp242 wrote: post #9
lowbloodsugar wrote: post #6

Go hardly looks different than BCPL from 1967.

This is pretty much an intentional design choice. Fun fact: the first commit in the Go repository is from 1972. In B. https://github.com/golang/go/commit/7d7c6a97f8 Followed by a commit from 1974 to convert it to C, and 1988 to convert it to ANSI C: https://github.com/golang/go/commit/0bb0b61d6a https://github.com/golang/go/commit/0744ac9691 https://github.com/golang/go/commit/d82b11e4a4

Which is horrendous. In the forty years since BCPL (go was 2008?) the best way we could coordinate groups of developers in developing applications is to type streams of ASCII text and save them on disk with 0x0A indicating "the human wants a new line here". FML.

Imagine if, to change the graph of your Facebook feed, you had to checkout myname.person, add "friend Bob { ... }", and then try to commit it. But far more complex graphs of objects, classes, ASTs of implementation, sure, ASCII is fine for that.

It's embarrassing is what it is. I'm not saying it's not hard to come up with something better, but it's been fifty fucking years now.

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

#72

Post by nanis »

eterevsky wrote: post #45
benjaminjosephw wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

English is not my first language and my native language doesn't use Latin script, still all the keyboards that I ever saw supported entering ASCII characters. As far as I know all the keyboards that are in active use support English layout. We shouldn't dismiss this as "cultural imperialism". Instead we should use this to our advantage. Currently source code written in China or in Russia can be read by developers in…

Agreed. Growing up in a country and at a time with personally accessible computers and very little literature, I was able to learn stuff that withstood the test of time and did not subject me to switching costs.

Already, differences in menus and keyboard shortcuts make the skills of trained office workers less relevant when they immigrate.

We do not need more barriers to trade.

Some related thoughts:

https://www.nu42.com/2013/04/translation-of-programming-term...

and

https://www.nu42.com/2014/08/replacing-hash-keys-with-values...

The proponents of translation tend to believe what they themselves or other translators will be clear to people just learning the concepts. That is most often not true.

> I am willing to bet the sentence “Çözümü SCALAR bağlamda veri döndüren scalar() fonksiyonunu kullanmaktır” does not make any more sense to a Turkish speaker who speaks no English than “The solution is to use the scalar() function that will create SCALAR context for its parameter.”

> Translation and hash-lookup are different things. If you want to convey meaning, you have to have a command of both languages, and the subject matter. Without that, you are only going to add to the word soup. Translating “big event” as “büyük okazyon” helps no one.

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

#73

Post by zajio1am »

benjaminjosephw wrote: post #34
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.

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…

> 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".

SI units like meters and kilograms are also cultural imperialism and we should return to diversity of units, ideally different one for each town. /s

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

#74

Post by benjaminjosephw »

eterevsky wrote: post #45
benjaminjosephw wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

English is not my first language and my native language doesn't use Latin script, still all the keyboards that I ever saw supported entering ASCII characters. As far as I know all the keyboards that are in active use support English layout. We shouldn't dismiss this as "cultural imperialism". Instead we should use this to our advantage. Currently source code written in China or in Russia can be read by developers in…

The availability of alternative commercial keyboards is possibly not the best metric to use to judge actual need/desire. There are a large number of non-ASCII layouts that can be mapped on top of a standard QWERTY[0] which show that ASCII is not a valid assumption for a modern general purpose programming language.

The idea that we should all be grateful for the unification that using one language brings is a sentiment that reinforces the idea that this is cultural imperialism. There are definitely benefits to conformity, no doubt, but imposing it unnecessarily is a design decision that should be questioned. Why take away options from people who might value that freedom?

[0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keyboard_layout#Keyboard_layou...

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_imperialism

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

#76

Post by dcolkitt »

benjaminjosephw wrote: post #34
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.

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…

Let’s be realistic 99% of software, weighted by value, is in English. This is a good thing. There are strong network effects, and fracturing the software world into multiple competing linguo-spheres would destroy economies of scale.

Would you similarly oppose the requirement that all civil aviation globally be done in English on the grounds of “cultural imperialism”?

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

#77

Post by dsr_ »

If it's not on the keyboard, nobody is going to type it.

Solutions:

a) only use characters in the intersection of the top N most popular keyboard layouts

b) issue programmers' keyboards with an agreed character set

c) issue programmers' keypads with supplementary characters

d) add on-screen supplementary keypads

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

#78

Post by Causality1 »

benjaminjosephw wrote: post #34
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.

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…

This is just the English/Esperanto problem again. Do you do the thing that's the most fair or do you do the thing that's unfair but has the most benefits for everyone involved? Yes, it's unfair to limit people to ASCII but it's also the only way their code is going to see widespread engagement.
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