4 ms·

I see it the other way. It would be actually orders of magnitude less effort for the rest of the world to learn one standard system/language than to have every

I see it the other way. It would be actually orders of magnitude less effort for the rest of the world to learn one standard system/language than to have every app/product/document adapted to every single language/script/whatever in existence

crazygringo 5y ago
That's just factually untrue. The percentage of the world population involved in script adaptation and language translation is really quite tiny. Consumers vastly, vastly, vastly outnumber producers. Not to mention that we have things like automated translation that are "good enough" for many cases as well. Whereas learning a new language to fluency, for most adults, takes about ten years.
- cutemonster 5y ago
  Or takes forever, for some older/middle aged people, living in their own a bit isolated communities where there's no need to learn the new language
antris 5y ago
>the rest of the world to learn one standard system/language than to have every app/product/document adapted to every single language/script/whatever in existence But they don't. That's precisely why the text input handling is so difficult, because it has to solve it for all apps. How many apps have you worked on that has had to create their own text input system from scratch? I think for most developers that's zero. Like the article said in the end: >The necessary complexity here is immense, and this post only scratches the very surface of it. If anything, it's a miracle of the simplicity of modern programming that we're able to just slap down a <textarea> on a web page and instantly provide a text input for every internet user around the globe.
shard 5y ago
There is an issue with that just like with programming languages. Do we want to standardize on one programming language for all use cases? Because they have different expressiveness and core concepts, not all programming languages are the best fit for all situations (consider assembly versus TensorFlow). Similarly, different human languages have different core concepts, and express them differently (for example, English has a stronger emphasis on time branches, with all the different tenses, while Korean has a stronger emphasis on relations, with all the very specific words for different members of the family and politeness levels). If they are replaced with one language, that expressiveness would be lost.

crazygringo 5y ago

That's just factually untrue. The percentage of the world population involved in script adaptation and language translation is really quite tiny. Consumers vastly, vastly, vastly outnumber producers. Not to mention that we have things like automated translation that are "good enough" for many cases as well. Whereas learning a new language to fluency, for most adults, takes about ten years.

cutemonster 5y ago
Or takes forever, for some older/middle aged people, living in their own a bit isolated communities where there's no need to learn the new language

antris 5y ago

>the rest of the world to learn one standard system/language than to have every app/product/document adapted to every single language/script/whatever in existence But they don't. That's precisely why the text input handling is so difficult, because it has to solve it for all apps. How many apps have you worked on that has had to create their own text input system from scratch? I think for most developers that's zero. Like the article said in the end: >The necessary complexity here is immense, and this post only scratches the very surface of it. If anything, it's a miracle of the simplicity of modern programming that we're able to just slap down a <textarea> on a web page and instantly provide a text input for every internet user around the globe.

shard 5y ago

There is an issue with that just like with programming languages. Do we want to standardize on one programming language for all use cases? Because they have different expressiveness and core concepts, not all programming languages are the best fit for all situations (consider assembly versus TensorFlow). Similarly, different human languages have different core concepts, and express them differently (for example, English has a stronger emphasis on time branches, with all the different tenses, while Korean has a stronger emphasis on relations, with all the very specific words for different members of the family and politeness levels). If they are replaced with one language, that expressiveness would be lost.