5 ms·

Only hackers would try to reimplement the alphabet. I can't decide whether I should be proud or embarrassed.

by gallerdude 8y ago

StavrosK 8y ago
Definitely proud. Why embarrassed?
- the_cat_kittles 8y ago
  because it can come off as an incredible arrogance borne out of incredible ignorance. it really depends on how the idea is presented though.
- hoorayimhelping 8y ago
  Because the hubris of tech people to think something like "hey, trillions of humans have collectively decided over a few thousand years that the latin alphabet hits a pretty good sweet spot in human communication. I bet they didn't consider how readable it is, though. I can do better than all of them," is wearing thin. This came up in the Robinhood checking thread a few days ago. "Do you really think that you're going to outsmart a financial institution that employs people like you (but smarter) because you happen to be better at math than your facebook friends who studied polysci?" The hubris of people in tech who think they're the only people who notice things is getting really tiresome. Having said that, I think that's a slippery slope of a stance to take, because it stifles creativity and novel solutions, which history shows often come up when they're not looked for. But I think that's kind of the sentiment of embarrassment they were expressing: "groan, another techie is going to disrupt something that doesn't need disrupting." Edit: To the people responding to this (and downvoting): this person asked for an explanation for why someone would feel embarrassment at this. I was trying to give what I thought was a reasonable explanation. I don't actually feel embarrassed by this, I was just trying to understand and articulate someone else's feelings on this. I'm sorry if the explanation didn't do it for you.
  - mikeash 8y ago
    Robinhood is a weird example to bring up here. All the HNers who thought they knew better than a $6 billion financial company with an army of professionals turned out to be right, Robinhood got smacked down hard, and that top-rated comment in the initial thread now looks hilariously silly.
  - mindcrime 8y ago
    Because the hubris of tech people to think something like ... Ya know, the marquee sign does say Hacker News. If this seems like silly "tech people" nonsense to you, maybe you're not the intended audience.
  - StavrosK 8y ago
    I completely fail to see the problem here. Let people try to disrupt whatever they want, what's the harm? It's extremely unlikely that dotsies will ever be anything other than a minor curiosity, but where's the problem? There's a one in a billion chance it could be the next evolution of the alphabet, and, anyway, what's bad about trying? I don't see a reason for the negativity, because I don't see a single disadvantage in trying. If the author wants to waste their time, let them.
  - tlb 8y ago
    The difference from what was decided historically is that in the past, books had to be printed in a font chosen by the printer, so they chose one that the most people could read. Today, individuals can choose their own fonts to read in, so the legacy compatibility problem is greatly reduced. Given how different some international alphabets are (Russian, Hebrew, Katakana) it's not self-evident that the conventional Latin glyphs are optimal.
  - jxcl 8y ago
    > hey, trillions of humans have collectively decided over a few thousand years that the latin alphabet hits a pretty good sweet spot in human communication. I bet they didn't consider how readable it is, though. I can do better than all of them I don't know all the fancy names for logical fallacies but this seems to be deliberately misrepresenting the argument. The website clearly states that the problem with the Latin alphabet is that it has to be able to be written efficiently as well as read. Your trillions of humans over a few thousand years have had to both read and write this alphabet. In the past few hundred years we've had technology that allows someone who made a huge investment to produce massive amounts of text without writing, and in the past few decades the ability to produce text without writing has become completely ubiquitous. Does it still make sense for this alphabet to optimize for hand writing? Are you arguing that the constraints that made the Latin (or any handwritten) alphabet have remained unchanged over thousands of years? They want to redesign an alphabet to fit modern constraints. We consume a lot of text on devices that need to have screens that fit in our pockets. Perhaps a two-thousand year old alphabet isn't still the optimal solution? I also don't think the authors necessarily expect to disrupt anything. They just made something cool and put it on the internet. I'm happy people like this exist.
- lazzlazzlazz 8y ago
  You seriously, seriously need to reconsider a significant part of your worldview if you can easily think of the reasons one ought to be "proud" of such an effort, but you can't think of the reasons one might be "embarrassed". Without knowing it, you've taken a weirdly extreme and limited perspective - and deprived yourself of anything remotely close to a complete understanding. I assume you're probably proud of your "optimism" or something here, but it's absolutely silly.
  - StavrosK 8y ago
    Please give me a reason why someone should be embarrassed for creating something that harms nobody.
kazinator 8y ago
Or maybe "script" kiddies, ha. Pun intended. I think, real hackers lose interest in monoalphabetic substitution ciphers by junior high.
reportingsjr 8y ago
This is far from the first time anyone has created new alphabets. Take a look at the shavian alphabet for another interesting take on written text.

Only hackers would try to reimplement the alphabet. I can't decide whether I should be proud or embarrassed.

StavrosK 8y ago

Definitely proud. Why embarrassed?

the_cat_kittles 8y ago
because it can come off as an incredible arrogance borne out of incredible ignorance. it really depends on how the idea is presented though.
hoorayimhelping 8y ago
Because the hubris of tech people to think something like "hey, trillions of humans have collectively decided over a few thousand years that the latin alphabet hits a pretty good sweet spot in human communication. I bet they didn't consider how readable it is, though. I can do better than all of them," is wearing thin. This came up in the Robinhood checking thread a few days ago. "Do you really think that you're going to outsmart a financial institution that employs people like you (but smarter) because you happen to be better at math than your facebook friends who studied polysci?" The hubris of people in tech who think they're the only people who notice things is getting really tiresome. Having said that, I think that's a slippery slope of a stance to take, because it stifles creativity and novel solutions, which history shows often come up when they're not looked for. But I think that's kind of the sentiment of embarrassment they were expressing: "groan, another techie is going to disrupt something that doesn't need disrupting." Edit: To the people responding to this (and downvoting): this person asked for an explanation for why someone would feel embarrassment at this. I was trying to give what I thought was a reasonable explanation. I don't actually feel embarrassed by this, I was just trying to understand and articulate someone else's feelings on this. I'm sorry if the explanation didn't do it for you.
- mikeash 8y ago
  Robinhood is a weird example to bring up here. All the HNers who thought they knew better than a $6 billion financial company with an army of professionals turned out to be right, Robinhood got smacked down hard, and that top-rated comment in the initial thread now looks hilariously silly.
- mindcrime 8y ago
  Because the hubris of tech people to think something like ... Ya know, the marquee sign does say Hacker News. If this seems like silly "tech people" nonsense to you, maybe you're not the intended audience.
- StavrosK 8y ago
  I completely fail to see the problem here. Let people try to disrupt whatever they want, what's the harm? It's extremely unlikely that dotsies will ever be anything other than a minor curiosity, but where's the problem? There's a one in a billion chance it could be the next evolution of the alphabet, and, anyway, what's bad about trying? I don't see a reason for the negativity, because I don't see a single disadvantage in trying. If the author wants to waste their time, let them.
- tlb 8y ago
  The difference from what was decided historically is that in the past, books had to be printed in a font chosen by the printer, so they chose one that the most people could read. Today, individuals can choose their own fonts to read in, so the legacy compatibility problem is greatly reduced. Given how different some international alphabets are (Russian, Hebrew, Katakana) it's not self-evident that the conventional Latin glyphs are optimal.
- jxcl 8y ago
  > hey, trillions of humans have collectively decided over a few thousand years that the latin alphabet hits a pretty good sweet spot in human communication. I bet they didn't consider how readable it is, though. I can do better than all of them I don't know all the fancy names for logical fallacies but this seems to be deliberately misrepresenting the argument. The website clearly states that the problem with the Latin alphabet is that it has to be able to be written efficiently as well as read. Your trillions of humans over a few thousand years have had to both read and write this alphabet. In the past few hundred years we've had technology that allows someone who made a huge investment to produce massive amounts of text without writing, and in the past few decades the ability to produce text without writing has become completely ubiquitous. Does it still make sense for this alphabet to optimize for hand writing? Are you arguing that the constraints that made the Latin (or any handwritten) alphabet have remained unchanged over thousands of years? They want to redesign an alphabet to fit modern constraints. We consume a lot of text on devices that need to have screens that fit in our pockets. Perhaps a two-thousand year old alphabet isn't still the optimal solution? I also don't think the authors necessarily expect to disrupt anything. They just made something cool and put it on the internet. I'm happy people like this exist.
lazzlazzlazz 8y ago
You seriously, seriously need to reconsider a significant part of your worldview if you can easily think of the reasons one ought to be "proud" of such an effort, but you can't think of the reasons one might be "embarrassed". Without knowing it, you've taken a weirdly extreme and limited perspective - and deprived yourself of anything remotely close to a complete understanding. I assume you're probably proud of your "optimism" or something here, but it's absolutely silly.
- StavrosK 8y ago
  Please give me a reason why someone should be embarrassed for creating something that harms nobody.

kazinator 8y ago

Or maybe "script" kiddies, ha. Pun intended. I think, real hackers lose interest in monoalphabetic substitution ciphers by junior high.

reportingsjr 8y ago

This is far from the first time anyone has created new alphabets. Take a look at the shavian alphabet for another interesting take on written text.