7 ms·

Honest question: can someone explain why everyone loves emoji these days, especially with regards to 'modern' programming communities such as those around JS an

by DC-3 8y ago

Honest question: can someone explain why everyone loves emoji these days, especially with regards to 'modern' programming communities such as those around JS and Rust? Is it just a celebration of the fact that we have Unicode support everywhere now?

saagarjha 8y ago
I think the goal is adding a sense of lightheartedness and by humanizing code in general, which has historically had the perception of being dry.
- afraca 8y ago
  I don't mind it being used in some (mostly) 'closed off' service, but given how commit messages from git will show up on several locations it seems a bad idea to allow users to use `:art:` in a commit message IMHO.
- matt4077 8y ago
  I don't think it has an explicit "goal", as in someone wondering "How can my code appear more humanizing?" It's just that people somehow enjoy this new new dimension of expression in text-only media. It has long been pretty obvious that text lacks the subtlety of face-to-face or voice interactions, and that many problems stem from people misjudging the intended tone of writing. Emojis, while imperfect, may help ;)
- calv 8y ago
  Also if your coding guidelines can use emojis in commit message to mean a certain thing if you all have a common lookup and it becomes natural to see what a change affects. e.g. :bug: for fixing bugs
  - majewsky 8y ago
    You can do that with plain ASCII, e.g. Github recognizes the phrase "Closes #123." in commit messages and autocloses that issue when the commit is merged into master. I've seen similar commit hooks in SVN over 10 yrs ago.
omeid2 8y ago
I find the whole trend very childish and unprofessional. Why? Because emojis don't convey much meaning and borders on child-talk, worst yet, they're very vague and so makes for very poor and unprofessional form of communication.
- oblio 8y ago
  Assuming we're talking about commit messages and such, you're probably right. But in day-to-day chats they're useful. Text is extremely bad at conveying emotion and nuance. Stuff like humor, sarcasm, irony is really hard to transmit, especially with more people. A well placed emoji/smiley can help.
  - DC-3 8y ago
    I agree with this. I'm certainly not averse to dropping a :-) or emoji equivalent when appropriate. But emoji party hats every time a PR is merged, or READMEs covered with emoji, or worse of all, CLIs that use emoji in them are annoying to me and I don't understand the appeal.
  - type0 8y ago
    > talking about commit messages I heard that for some folks it makes it easier to find the right commits, unfortunately it's the opposite of being inclusive because other collaborators can become easily distracted by them.
- Aeolun 8y ago
  I am baffled by your assertion that they convey little meaning. Do facial expressions also convey little meaning? To me the combination of both gives a hell of a lot more to base interpretation of tone on.
  - tehbeard 8y ago
    1. The size of emoji makes them difficult to grok, probably more so when you have to context switch between language comprehension and determining the emotion of the face. Also factor in how they look different on different platforms. 2. What about emoji's that aren't faces, or that have taken on a different meaning (see, eggplant or that infernal clapping emoji that's taken over twitter)
PurpleRamen 8y ago
Emojis are the new punctuation marks. Displaying emotions in written text started at some point with the exclamation mark, which over time evolved and shifted in meaning. At some point !!! become a different meaning then a single !, and !? was added too. But then someone developed the smilie and the 90's was all about :-) and ;-> and sometimes even =^o^=. But it was kinda hard to write on mobile devices and took too much space in SMS. So the emojis were invented, standards were created and at some point universal support was established and the explosion of usage begun. Now people can communicate emotional without the need to write lengthly words.
- strongbond 8y ago
  According to https://blog.sourcerer.io/ascii-art-dead-or-alive-cc237391e5d8 https://blog.sourcerer.io/ascii-art-dead-or-alive-cc237391e5... the first ASCII emoticons were written by scott Fahlman in 1982.
crehn 8y ago
They convey emotions and add a touch of lightheartedness and fun. It's all about a healthy balance. You can still have constructive discussions about complex topics, with emojis, without giving up the Professional Adult™ card.
wyldfire 8y ago
Would that the unicode support was indeed ubiquitous. Then you wouldn't need to parse the message for things like ":penguin:", you could just include the appropriate character/icon.
- superdaniel 8y ago
  Is there a downside to including the actual unicode emoji versus the text version that needs to be rendered? I tend to go for the former.
DannyB2 8y ago
> can someone explain why everyone loves emoji these days What do you have against emojis? I'm hoping I can set my hostname to all emoji characters (UTF-8) so that other workstations on the network will show my hostname as those emoji characters.

by DC-3 8y ago

saagarjha 8y ago

I think the goal is adding a sense of lightheartedness and by humanizing code in general, which has historically had the perception of being dry.

afraca 8y ago
I don't mind it being used in some (mostly) 'closed off' service, but given how commit messages from git will show up on several locations it seems a bad idea to allow users to use `:art:` in a commit message IMHO.
matt4077 8y ago
I don't think it has an explicit "goal", as in someone wondering "How can my code appear more humanizing?" It's just that people somehow enjoy this new new dimension of expression in text-only media. It has long been pretty obvious that text lacks the subtlety of face-to-face or voice interactions, and that many problems stem from people misjudging the intended tone of writing. Emojis, while imperfect, may help ;)
calv 8y ago
Also if your coding guidelines can use emojis in commit message to mean a certain thing if you all have a common lookup and it becomes natural to see what a change affects. e.g. :bug: for fixing bugs
- majewsky 8y ago
  You can do that with plain ASCII, e.g. Github recognizes the phrase "Closes #123." in commit messages and autocloses that issue when the commit is merged into master. I've seen similar commit hooks in SVN over 10 yrs ago.

omeid2 8y ago

I find the whole trend very childish and unprofessional. Why? Because emojis don't convey much meaning and borders on child-talk, worst yet, they're very vague and so makes for very poor and unprofessional form of communication.

oblio 8y ago
Assuming we're talking about commit messages and such, you're probably right. But in day-to-day chats they're useful. Text is extremely bad at conveying emotion and nuance. Stuff like humor, sarcasm, irony is really hard to transmit, especially with more people. A well placed emoji/smiley can help.
- DC-3 8y ago
  I agree with this. I'm certainly not averse to dropping a :-) or emoji equivalent when appropriate. But emoji party hats every time a PR is merged, or READMEs covered with emoji, or worse of all, CLIs that use emoji in them are annoying to me and I don't understand the appeal.
- type0 8y ago
  > talking about commit messages I heard that for some folks it makes it easier to find the right commits, unfortunately it's the opposite of being inclusive because other collaborators can become easily distracted by them.
Aeolun 8y ago
I am baffled by your assertion that they convey little meaning. Do facial expressions also convey little meaning? To me the combination of both gives a hell of a lot more to base interpretation of tone on.
- tehbeard 8y ago
  1. The size of emoji makes them difficult to grok, probably more so when you have to context switch between language comprehension and determining the emotion of the face. Also factor in how they look different on different platforms. 2. What about emoji's that aren't faces, or that have taken on a different meaning (see, eggplant or that infernal clapping emoji that's taken over twitter)

PurpleRamen 8y ago

Emojis are the new punctuation marks. Displaying emotions in written text started at some point with the exclamation mark, which over time evolved and shifted in meaning. At some point !!! become a different meaning then a single !, and !? was added too. But then someone developed the smilie and the 90's was all about :-) and ;-> and sometimes even =^o^=. But it was kinda hard to write on mobile devices and took too much space in SMS. So the emojis were invented, standards were created and at some point universal support was established and the explosion of usage begun. Now people can communicate emotional without the need to write lengthly words.

strongbond 8y ago
According to https://blog.sourcerer.io/ascii-art-dead-or-alive-cc237391e5d8 https://blog.sourcerer.io/ascii-art-dead-or-alive-cc237391e5... the first ASCII emoticons were written by scott Fahlman in 1982.

crehn 8y ago

They convey emotions and add a touch of lightheartedness and fun. It's all about a healthy balance. You can still have constructive discussions about complex topics, with emojis, without giving up the Professional Adult™ card.

wyldfire 8y ago

Would that the unicode support was indeed ubiquitous. Then you wouldn't need to parse the message for things like ":penguin:", you could just include the appropriate character/icon.

superdaniel 8y ago
Is there a downside to including the actual unicode emoji versus the text version that needs to be rendered? I tend to go for the former.

DannyB2 8y ago

> can someone explain why everyone loves emoji these days What do you have against emojis? I'm hoping I can set my hostname to all emoji characters (UTF-8) so that other workstations on the network will show my hostname as those emoji characters.