4 ms·

> 4.7kΩ ± 5% And now ask somebody to type those unicode chars on the top of his/her head... Plus how do you look what it does in google ? In a a documentation

> 4.7kΩ ± 5% And now ask somebody to type those unicode chars on the top of his/her head... Plus how do you look what it does in google ? In a a documentation ? How do you generate documentation for those ? Cause you have no method name, no class name, nothing. And then what's the exact implementation behind it ? Does it do something funny ? So I have to mix the dozen of funny details of all the code from the guys who though the 20 times they do this super-important-operation they need to recreate a whole new syntax ?

TeMPOraL 9y ago
> And now ask somebody to type those unicode chars on the top of his/her head... That's about the only problematic thing with this, though your editor should let you do it relatively easily; if it doesn't, find a one that doesn't suck ;). > Plus how do you look what it does in google ? In a a documentation ? How do you generate documentation for those ? Like with any other piece of API code. There's nothing special here. > And then what's the exact implementation behind it ? Does it do something funny ? So I have to mix the dozen of funny details of all the code from the guys who though the 20 times they do this super-important-operation they need to recreate a whole new syntax ? Check the associated documentation, or source code if available. I get the impression programmers nowadays are afraid of reading the source of stuff they use.
- athenot 9y ago
  > > And now ask somebody to type those unicode chars on the top of his/her head... > That's about the only problematic thing with this, though your editor should let you do it relatively easily; if it doesn't, find a one that doesn't suck ;). On macOS, and on a qwerty keyboard: • Ω is Option Z • ± is Option Shift = (or Option + if you look at it another way) Many moons ago, HyperTalk (and I think AppleScript still does) supported ≥, ≤ and ≠ as shorthands for >=, <= and !=; and they were typed as Option >, Option <, and Option = respectively (fewer keystrokes).
- sametmax 9y ago
  You really need to work outside of your 10x bubble. This is scary to see you completly ignore common dev issues.
  - TeMPOraL 9y ago
    I don't ignore it. I refuse to accept that a developer can be allowed to forever use only the little knowledge they got on their bootcamp / university, and never learn anything on the job. It's like when we were transitioning to Java 8 on a project at work, and someone asked me if I don't think using lambda expressions will be confusing to some people in the company. My answer was: this is standard Java now, they're Java developers - they should sit down and learn their fucking language. We should not sacrifice the quality of the codebase just because few people can't be bothered to spend few hours learning. (Oh, and over time, it turned out nobody was confused for long. Some people saw me use lambdas, others saw their favourite IDEs suggesting them using lambdas instead of anonymous class boilerplate - all of that motivated them to learn. Now they all know how to use new Java 8 features and happily apply this knowledge.) Programming is a profession. One should be expected to learn on the job. And refusing to learn is, frankly, self-handicapping.
evincarofautumn 9y ago
Programming languages characteristically haven’t adopted Unicode syntax because Unicode input methods aren’t “there yet”. But if we start accepting Unicode in programming languages, at least as an option with ASCII as a fallback, then input methods, searching, and so on will be forced to improve. I currently use Emacs’ TeX input method, so I can type “\forall\alpha. \alpha \to \alpha” and get “∀α. α → α” or ”4.7k\Omega \pm 5%” for “4.7kΩ ± 5%”, which isn’t too bad. And in Haskell at least there’s Hoogle, which lets you search for unfamiliar operators, even Unicode ones. For instance, searching for “∈” gives me base-unicode-symbols:Data.Foldable.Unicode.∈ :: (Foldable t, Eq a) => a -> t a -> Bool and tells me it’s equal to the “elem” function which tests for membership in a container. Using ASCII art instead of standard symbols introduces some cognitive load for beginners as well. When I was tutoring computer science in college, I had students get confused by many little things, like “->” instead of “→” (“Minus greater than? What could that possibly mean?”) or writing “=>” instead of “>=” because “≤” is written “<=”.
- FridgeSeal 9y ago
  I've been using Fira Code[0] which supports ligatures and (in addition to being a nice looking monospace font) it makes reading code with those symbols so much nicer. I mainly write Python and that generally uses a pretty limited set of special symbols, but it really does make a difference when you see ≤ rather than <= and 'long equals' instead of == etc. I definitely recommend it. I'd love to see ligature/unicode support rolled out more widely, symbols allow for more easy differentiation and they're so nice to look at when you do have them.
  - evincarofautumn 9y ago
    I’ve tried Fira Code before, and I think it goes a bit too far honestly. It’s nice that it preserves character widths, but ideally I’d like to get away from monospaced fonts as well—they’re pretty much just a holdover from the technical limitations of typewriters and text displays. The main reason I don’t use proportional-width typefaces in programming is that I like to work in a text-only terminal (to avoid distraction) and that the ASCII-art approximations of symbols tend not to look very good.

TeMPOraL 9y ago

> And now ask somebody to type those unicode chars on the top of his/her head... That's about the only problematic thing with this, though your editor should let you do it relatively easily; if it doesn't, find a one that doesn't suck ;). > Plus how do you look what it does in google ? In a a documentation ? How do you generate documentation for those ? Like with any other piece of API code. There's nothing special here. > And then what's the exact implementation behind it ? Does it do something funny ? So I have to mix the dozen of funny details of all the code from the guys who though the 20 times they do this super-important-operation they need to recreate a whole new syntax ? Check the associated documentation, or source code if available. I get the impression programmers nowadays are afraid of reading the source of stuff they use.

athenot 9y ago
> > And now ask somebody to type those unicode chars on the top of his/her head... > That's about the only problematic thing with this, though your editor should let you do it relatively easily; if it doesn't, find a one that doesn't suck ;). On macOS, and on a qwerty keyboard: • Ω is Option Z • ± is Option Shift = (or Option + if you look at it another way) Many moons ago, HyperTalk (and I think AppleScript still does) supported ≥, ≤ and ≠ as shorthands for >=, <= and !=; and they were typed as Option >, Option <, and Option = respectively (fewer keystrokes).
sametmax 9y ago
You really need to work outside of your 10x bubble. This is scary to see you completly ignore common dev issues.
- TeMPOraL 9y ago
  I don't ignore it. I refuse to accept that a developer can be allowed to forever use only the little knowledge they got on their bootcamp / university, and never learn anything on the job. It's like when we were transitioning to Java 8 on a project at work, and someone asked me if I don't think using lambda expressions will be confusing to some people in the company. My answer was: this is standard Java now, they're Java developers - they should sit down and learn their fucking language. We should not sacrifice the quality of the codebase just because few people can't be bothered to spend few hours learning. (Oh, and over time, it turned out nobody was confused for long. Some people saw me use lambdas, others saw their favourite IDEs suggesting them using lambdas instead of anonymous class boilerplate - all of that motivated them to learn. Now they all know how to use new Java 8 features and happily apply this knowledge.) Programming is a profession. One should be expected to learn on the job. And refusing to learn is, frankly, self-handicapping.

evincarofautumn 9y ago

Programming languages characteristically haven’t adopted Unicode syntax because Unicode input methods aren’t “there yet”. But if we start accepting Unicode in programming languages, at least as an option with ASCII as a fallback, then input methods, searching, and so on will be forced to improve. I currently use Emacs’ TeX input method, so I can type “\forall\alpha. \alpha \to \alpha” and get “∀α. α → α” or ”4.7k\Omega \pm 5%” for “4.7kΩ ± 5%”, which isn’t too bad. And in Haskell at least there’s Hoogle, which lets you search for unfamiliar operators, even Unicode ones. For instance, searching for “∈” gives me base-unicode-symbols:Data.Foldable.Unicode.∈ :: (Foldable t, Eq a) => a -> t a -> Bool and tells me it’s equal to the “elem” function which tests for membership in a container. Using ASCII art instead of standard symbols introduces some cognitive load for beginners as well. When I was tutoring computer science in college, I had students get confused by many little things, like “->” instead of “→” (“Minus greater than? What could that possibly mean?”) or writing “=>” instead of “>=” because “≤” is written “<=”.

FridgeSeal 9y ago
I've been using Fira Code[0] which supports ligatures and (in addition to being a nice looking monospace font) it makes reading code with those symbols so much nicer. I mainly write Python and that generally uses a pretty limited set of special symbols, but it really does make a difference when you see ≤ rather than <= and 'long equals' instead of == etc. I definitely recommend it. I'd love to see ligature/unicode support rolled out more widely, symbols allow for more easy differentiation and they're so nice to look at when you do have them.
- evincarofautumn 9y ago
  I’ve tried Fira Code before, and I think it goes a bit too far honestly. It’s nice that it preserves character widths, but ideally I’d like to get away from monospaced fonts as well—they’re pretty much just a holdover from the technical limitations of typewriters and text displays. The main reason I don’t use proportional-width typefaces in programming is that I like to work in a text-only terminal (to avoid distraction) and that the ASCII-art approximations of symbols tend not to look very good.