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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)

#101

Post by benjaminjosephw »

dcolkitt wrote: post #76
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…

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”?

> fracturing the software world into multiple competing linguo-spheres would destroy economies of scale

There is a very visible pattern in most Open Source projects where a small group of core maintainers will do most of the work even if there is a much wider body of causal contributors (see Nadia Eghbal's _Working In Public_). So, what are the economies of scale? Are you perhaps referring to problems experienced in the by-gone age of the early internet?

Economists largely agree that healthy competition is beneficial for improving quality, spurring innovation and reducing costs. I don't see the problem with multiple language/culture specific software projects that all solve the same problem. This could even look like different programmers working on different projects for different audiences.

The only downside I can see for the everyday programmers is the FOMO generated from inaccessible software in a foreign language. Isn't that ironic?

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

#102

Post by hnfong »

wutwutwutwut wrote: post #31
zabzonk wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

ASCII is an abbreviation for American Standard Code for Information Interchange after all.

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

#103

Post by Avamander »

slver wrote: post #88

The article's argument in a nutshell: We need to break free from the tyranny of the characters on our keyboard, and express ourselves using characters not on our keyboard. So I hope you see why that argument keeps failing.

Your keyboard is not my keyboard, nor everybody else's. So I hope you see how US-centric your view is.

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

#104

Post by Avamander »

dcolkitt wrote: post #76
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…

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”?

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

Do you think that every pilot on earth always speaks only English? No.

People should have the choice not to speak English and write their alphabets if they wish.

Enforcing ASCII on code is like enforcing ASCII on URIs, e-mail addresses. Unnecessarily restrictive to the rest of the world outside of the anglosphere. Of which there's a lot.

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

#105

Post by Avamander »

zajio1am wrote: post #73
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…

> 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

Yeah, go start using metric in the US.

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

#106

Post by Avamander »

umvi wrote: post #97
leephillips wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don’t need a “special keyboard setup”. Linux with X11 can do this out of the box. Add a line to your xmodmap file to put the dead Greek key where you want, and you’re done. I type ω by tapping a modifier key and then w. It’s even easier than typing W, because I don’t even have to hold down the modifier.

That... sounds like a special keyboard setup to me.

It was the default for me.

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

#107

Post by dcolkitt »

Avamander wrote: post #104
dcolkitt wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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”?

> Would you similarly oppose the requirement that all civil aviation globally be done in English on the grounds of “cultural imperialism”? Do you think that every pilot on earth always speaks only English? No. People should have the choice not to speak English and write their alphabets if they wish. Enforcing ASCII on code is like enforcing ASCII on URIs, e-mail addresses. Unnecessarily restrictive to the rest of the…

Yes. All civil aviation globally is conducted in English. Becoming a pilot or air traffic controller anywhere in the world requires proficiency.

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

#108

Post by zozbot234 »

amelius wrote: post #29
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.

Windows + . (dot key) does that by default. Sure, most of the symbols are just weird cat faces or whatever, but the basic feature is there.

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

#109

Post by sokoloff »

doctor_eval wrote: post #36
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…

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.

Given that the go community does not seem to hold this as a majority opinion, you might consider whether an editor translation layer could allow you to tailor your environment to your preferences while maintaining source-level compatibility with the broader go community.

If compatibility is not as important to you, privately forking the language is also an option, but that seems fraught with peril of your code dying with you.

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

#110

Post by fzzzy »

slver wrote: post #90
auggierose wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hashing, like in Git I guess built-in things get fixed names / hashes, and the hashes of everything else follow from that. They need a mapping from content/hashes to human-friendly names, obviously. Not sure if they gained anything here, but they seem to think so, so might be worth checking this out.

I don't know why we keep reinventing this distribution model and failing at it, then trying again. Bugfixing and identity matter.

Uh, could you explain more? Your comment doesn't really give any clues about what you are complaining about.
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