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Most keyboard-layouts predate programming-languages, because they were designed for typewrites decades before the first modern computers even existed. So there
by slightwinder 6y ago
Most keyboard-layouts predate programming-languages, because they were designed for typewrites decades before the first modern computers even existed. So there did gave much to usage of special chara back then. Additionally most languages were designed by americans, on US-layout, which had a great impact on usages of different char in our digital world. Like for example the usage of @, which AFAIK was only used for e-mail because there was no other free char on the developers keyboard available.
- wott 6y ago> Like for example the usage of @, which AFAIK was only used for e-mail because there was no other free char on the developers keyboard available. '@' meant 'at' looong before e-mail was invented.
- tesseract 6y agoBut traditionally mainly (only?) in the context of "at [price per unit]", not "at [location]".
- dragonwriter 6y agoIn American usage, it has had widespread use as shorthand for “at” in many different contexts, not just in terms of price per unit fir quite a while; some of them.may have been catalyzed by thr usage in email, but I think enough are older that email fits into an existing pattern rather than creating a new one.
- slightwinder 6y agoYes, in english language. Other languages have/had different names, if they even knew it at this point. There was of course a reason why the @ was on the english keyboard-layout, but it was a very different reason from the later usage as location/user-reference. Point is, if e-mail would have been invented in a different culture, there would be a good chance that the symbol wasn't even on their keyboard at the time and a different symbol would likely have been used.