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OP here. I teach Python to Fortune 100 companies, more or less every day. You're totally right that people who deal with outside-world data need Unicode. A
by reuven 10y ago
OP here. I teach Python to Fortune 100 companies, more or less every day.
You're totally right that people who deal with outside-world data need Unicode. Anything that deals with users MUST deal with Unicode.
But a huge proportion of the people I work with -- in Israel, China, and Europe -- couldn't care less about Unicode. That's because they're processing logfiles, dealing with test automation and system administration. For them, Unicode is important a very small proportion of the time.
So I stand by my assertion that a small proportion of developers need to worry about Unicode. But I also agree with you that Unicode is absolutely crucial in the modern world, and that a language lacking good Unicode support isn't going to get very far.
- orf 10y ago> That's because they're processing logfiles, dealing with test automation and system administration ... So I stand by my assertion that a small proportion of developers need to worry about Unicode. You come to this conclusion based on your dealings with a small subset of developers within a small subset of companies? I think many other developers in the fortune 500 companies outside of the subset you deal with would laugh at that conclusion, then go back to developing apps that deal with people/locales all over the world.
- reuven 10y agoFair enough. My sample is from lots of companies, but a small subset of tasks there.
- falcolas 10y agoThis also describes my entire team. And the team before that. There are at least as many developers out there who don't write user facing code as those who do. When I do run across Unicode, it's just a matter of passing it through, which is usually pretty easy to do.
- selectnull 10y agoJust because your users are dealing with logfiles, their users should still be able to use č ƒ ø or whatever unicode character in the filename or url - which will consequently end up in a log file.
- viraptor 10y agoMost logs are actually bytestrings. If they include user-controlled strings, they will likely have to be parsed as binary blobs to accommodate that.
- 1ris 10y agoMany logs are localised - and contain unicode.
- viraptor 10y agoThere's a difference though. Does the log format itself in some unicode encoding, or does it just embed some utf-X encoded strings? If you just embed some user input and assume it will decode properly, you're likely to run into issues at some point when someone provides explicitly-broken encoding.
- jcranmer 10y agoTrue story: I once broke build automation by including non-ASCII text in the commit message. Just because something is internal doesn't mean that it won't have Unicode.