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Your language sucks

garrett.damore.org

1–10 of 133 posts

Re: Your language sucks

#2
I don't see anything here that hasn't been solved by ICU. Am I missing something?

http://site.icu-project.org/

Anecdote time: I once worked on a software project where all of the sorting was done using an internal library made by a Large Trustworthy International Corporation. We discovered halfway through that the transitive property was not being maintained during sorts mixing half-width and full-width numerals. (In other words, 1 1.) Switching to ICU left me ultra-impressed at its thoroughness.

Re: Your language sucks

#4
The points made may be salient, but the tone is so condescending as to be nearly unreadable without getting angry. A large number of his points around languages that are radically different from English could be summed up as: "Your language sucks to deal with in computing because your native country didn't develop computing machinery first."

This fairly reeks of tone-deafness.

Re: Your language sucks

#5
All I hear is: "I wanted to model the real world and it didn't fit my mental model."

Sadly, there is some information in all that cruft that is interesting to people coming from an english context when dealing with international character handling, but well, nothing you couldn't get somewhere else.

Re: Your language sucks

#6

The points made may be salient, but the tone is so condescending as to be nearly unreadable without getting angry. A large number of his points around languages that are radically different from English could be summed up as: "Your language sucks to deal with in computing because your native country didn't develop computing machinery first." This fairly reeks of tone-deafness.

This.

I was thinking the same.

Re: Your language sucks

#8

The points made may be salient, but the tone is so condescending as to be nearly unreadable without getting angry. A large number of his points around languages that are radically different from English could be summed up as: "Your language sucks to deal with in computing because your native country didn't develop computing machinery first." This fairly reeks of tone-deafness.

On one hand, I realize it's totally meant tongue-in-cheek. So I don't want to pick on the article, because it's useful and funny.

On the other hand, I've been seeing this attitude in regards to other topics lately. "Why can't humans be perfect... like this machine?" Well, guess what, bub. We came first, and this stupid computer had better get used to it. Me, I like my clumsy, imperfect analog world.

Re: Your language sucks

#9

Whether you agree with its tone/conclusion or not, this is a really informative compilation of problems that can arise in processing international text. Very nice.

I think the tone is intentionally aggressive - it drives clicks and spices things up - I was at least entertained.

Re: Your language sucks

#10

The points made may be salient, but the tone is so condescending as to be nearly unreadable without getting angry. A large number of his points around languages that are radically different from English could be summed up as: "Your language sucks to deal with in computing because your native country didn't develop computing machinery first." This fairly reeks of tone-deafness.

He says they suck to deal w/ in computing because they're hugely more complicated than English and Russian which have very small, simple alphabets that are very easy to process.
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