6 ms·

i don't know if you are being ironic or not, but the non-english speaking world will love it.

throwaway894345 6y ago
There are lots of other languages that support full UTF-8 in identifiers (e.g, Go) and the non-English-speaking world doesn't take advantage.
- erik_seaberg 6y ago
  Some do: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14276891 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14276891
  - throwaway894345 6y ago
    I've done a similar thing when I was writing a language (with generics) that compiled to Go and needed to implement name mangling. But in any case, this isn't an example of a non-native speaker using utf-8 to write in his native language. :)
- rurban 6y ago
  Every such such language does it insecurely. The only exceptions are Java, rust and cperl. I rather have no unicode identifiers than insecure identifiers, which don't follow the unicode security guidelines for identifiers.
alufers 6y ago
As a non-English programmer who has seen a lot of code not written using English please, god, NO. The mixture of English and other languages identifiers in the external libraries makes me cry.
- wiz21c 6y ago
  Yep, writing non english keywords in C++ is like having prolog code inside c++ :-) (but as a non english person, I find it very helpful to be able to have unicode in strings)
  - q92z8oeif 6y ago
    that's fine, keep using english. But do not expect people that do not speak english to learn it if there's an alternative. Someday we might have multilingual frameworks and not restrict programming to the privileged few that could learn a second language. Entitled programers are so into their broculture they can't see their own problems as being socially constructed. On one hand they complain "reading mixed language code is hard, despite me being fluent on both! everyone should speak what is more convenient to me!" without realizing they are leaving billions of people that do not know english out. Then on this very same thread they also complain that "reading math with greek letters is too hard" despite that being an arbitrary rule set in place by the people that used greek and latin knowledge as a way to make their privilege less accessible. The irony is dense! ...don't even get me started on a programmer workers union.
    - aspaceman 6y ago
      I really disagree with the idea that math uses greek letters just to make things less accessible. If you have a better symbol than the large S for an integral, or Sigma for sums, I'd love to hear it.
      - wtallis 6y ago
        People who complain about math notation and want something more verbose like programming usually don't fully understand the notation they're complaining about. In particular, there are fairly strong conventions for which letters get used for which purposes. Longer variable names that try to be more descriptive often aren't as necessary as they might seem, and in many cases would make an expression less generic than it really is. And then there's the fact that what's easy to type on a standard keyboard without a specialized IME has little bearing on what notation is most effective for the reader, or for someone writing on paper or blackboard.
- malkia 6y ago
  I wish Math used normal english, not greek letters - english is my second language too..
  - zorked 6y ago
    They are latin letters, not english. Unless you mean futhorc. Which would be awesome.
    - notRobot 6y ago
      https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_alphabet https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_alphabet Many of these characters are hard to type on regular keyboards, which is probably what the parent commenter was referring to.
    - throwaway894345 6y ago
      He didn't say "english letters", he said "english" which is a language. The implication is that we should use conventions (including potentially whole words) that are familiar to the English-literate world and not Greek glyphs.
      - coldtea 6y ago
        >The implication is that we should use conventions (including potentially whole words) that are familiar to the English-literate world and not Greek glyphs. The "english-literate" world (emphasis on literate) is, or historically has been, very familiar with Greek glyphs. And that's just for humanities. The mathematic and physics -literate world, doubly so. Everybody uses pi, theta, sigma (e.g. the summation formula) etc symbols...
        throwaway894345 6y ago
        > The "english-literate" world (emphasis on literate) is, or historically has been, very familiar with Greek glyphs. I would be shocked if even 1% of native English speakers could list the full Greek alphabet much less have a comprehensive familiarity with what each letter means across all branches of mathematics. I would be shocked if even 5% of native English speakers could tell you what theta generally means in geometry, much less all its other meanings.
lenkite 6y ago
From a non-english speaking country: I prefer US-ASCII for code. Anything else just obfuscates.
MauranKilom 6y ago
Tbh, I mainly shared the example code because I was entertained by the contrast of sophisticated naming and crude approximation. Still, it illustrates that this can come in very handy if used properly. Of course you can also cause all sorts of mayhem. Even disregarding fun such as GREEK QUESTION MARK looking like a semicolon and zero-width spaces, I probably would not use this feature in enterprise code. Too likely that some tool somewhere (e.g. an alternate compiler?) is KO'd by characters outside of basic ASCII range (which has served us well and will keep doing so).

There are lots of other languages that support full UTF-8 in identifiers (e.g, Go) and the non-English-speaking world doesn't take advantage.

erik_seaberg 6y ago
Some do: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14276891 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14276891
- throwaway894345 6y ago
  I've done a similar thing when I was writing a language (with generics) that compiled to Go and needed to implement name mangling. But in any case, this isn't an example of a non-native speaker using utf-8 to write in his native language. :)
rurban 6y ago
Every such such language does it insecurely. The only exceptions are Java, rust and cperl. I rather have no unicode identifiers than insecure identifiers, which don't follow the unicode security guidelines for identifiers.

alufers 6y ago

As a non-English programmer who has seen a lot of code not written using English please, god, NO. The mixture of English and other languages identifiers in the external libraries makes me cry.

wiz21c 6y ago
Yep, writing non english keywords in C++ is like having prolog code inside c++ :-) (but as a non english person, I find it very helpful to be able to have unicode in strings)
- q92z8oeif 6y ago
  that's fine, keep using english. But do not expect people that do not speak english to learn it if there's an alternative. Someday we might have multilingual frameworks and not restrict programming to the privileged few that could learn a second language. Entitled programers are so into their broculture they can't see their own problems as being socially constructed. On one hand they complain "reading mixed language code is hard, despite me being fluent on both! everyone should speak what is more convenient to me!" without realizing they are leaving billions of people that do not know english out. Then on this very same thread they also complain that "reading math with greek letters is too hard" despite that being an arbitrary rule set in place by the people that used greek and latin knowledge as a way to make their privilege less accessible. The irony is dense! ...don't even get me started on a programmer workers union.
  - aspaceman 6y ago
    I really disagree with the idea that math uses greek letters just to make things less accessible. If you have a better symbol than the large S for an integral, or Sigma for sums, I'd love to hear it.
    - wtallis 6y ago
      People who complain about math notation and want something more verbose like programming usually don't fully understand the notation they're complaining about. In particular, there are fairly strong conventions for which letters get used for which purposes. Longer variable names that try to be more descriptive often aren't as necessary as they might seem, and in many cases would make an expression less generic than it really is. And then there's the fact that what's easy to type on a standard keyboard without a specialized IME has little bearing on what notation is most effective for the reader, or for someone writing on paper or blackboard.
malkia 6y ago
I wish Math used normal english, not greek letters - english is my second language too..
- zorked 6y ago
  They are latin letters, not english. Unless you mean futhorc. Which would be awesome.
  - notRobot 6y ago
    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_alphabet https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_alphabet Many of these characters are hard to type on regular keyboards, which is probably what the parent commenter was referring to.
  - throwaway894345 6y ago
    He didn't say "english letters", he said "english" which is a language. The implication is that we should use conventions (including potentially whole words) that are familiar to the English-literate world and not Greek glyphs.
    - coldtea 6y ago
      >The implication is that we should use conventions (including potentially whole words) that are familiar to the English-literate world and not Greek glyphs. The "english-literate" world (emphasis on literate) is, or historically has been, very familiar with Greek glyphs. And that's just for humanities. The mathematic and physics -literate world, doubly so. Everybody uses pi, theta, sigma (e.g. the summation formula) etc symbols...
      - throwaway894345 6y ago
        > The "english-literate" world (emphasis on literate) is, or historically has been, very familiar with Greek glyphs. I would be shocked if even 1% of native English speakers could list the full Greek alphabet much less have a comprehensive familiarity with what each letter means across all branches of mathematics. I would be shocked if even 5% of native English speakers could tell you what theta generally means in geometry, much less all its other meanings.

lenkite 6y ago

From a non-english speaking country: I prefer US-ASCII for code. Anything else just obfuscates.

MauranKilom 6y ago

Tbh, I mainly shared the example code because I was entertained by the contrast of sophisticated naming and crude approximation. Still, it illustrates that this can come in very handy if used properly. Of course you can also cause all sorts of mayhem. Even disregarding fun such as GREEK QUESTION MARK looking like a semicolon and zero-width spaces, I probably would not use this feature in enterprise code. Too likely that some tool somewhere (e.g. an alternate compiler?) is KO'd by characters outside of basic ASCII range (which has served us well and will keep doing so).