5 ms·

I'm personally very empathetic to this. Fortunately, I think most "real" developers are pretty restraint regarding this in popular packages' code. Some proper

by moelf 5y ago

I'm personally very empathetic to this. Fortunately, I think most "real" developers are pretty restraint regarding this in popular packages' code. Some proper use casees IMHO are: 1. in "terminal" code: scripts, notebooks. 2. function internal variables 3. for making the code look like their counterpart of a paper. idk what to think of 3. if you look at any paper, non of them only uses ASCII, which raises the question, if we're happy with reading papers (even CS ones) with symbols, why not in our code?

spicybright 5y ago
I definitely agree with this. It's just a pain to type out. Maybe I'm behind on this, but needing to use the mouse to find symbols in a huge menu is very painful. You can copy and paste too but again, huge break of flow. Do some editors support discord-style emoji syntax, where typing :fo would bring up a menu of emojis that might match foo. Then hitting enter inserts the emoji over the :foo: representation. You can also not use the auto complete menu. Ex. :pow2: might turn into ²
- moelf 5y ago
  Julia has the best REPL for this. You can \<type><tab> to type unicode symbol and emoji. Better yet, you can reverse look up how to type a thing: help?> χ²ᵢ "χ²ᵢ" can be typed by \chi<tab>\^2<tab>\_i<tab>
  - dnautics 5y ago
    Yeah. Now go edit your code.
    - leephillips 5y ago
      I can edit it in Vim with no problem.
      - dnautics 5y ago
        Sure, because you have a julia plugin. Not every casual user trying out the language will bother, or want to bother installing someone else's plugin. They'll just hit a function call they need to make with a Unicode character, go WTF man, and give up.
        leephillips 5y ago
        I don’t have a Julia plugin. I don’t even understand what you think the problem is.
        bmn__ 5y ago
        > They'll just hit a function call they need to make with a Unicode character This is optional, the language adapts to the capability of the user. He can write ∑ or sum for a function, µ or mu for an identifier. https://docs.julialang.org/en/v1/manual/functions/ https://docs.julialang.org/en/v1/manual/functions/ You get people riled up in this thread with your false assumption, next time simply ask questions.
        dnautics 5y ago
        that's for stuff in the stdlib. You can't control library writers, and julia does not force a function identifier that is mapped to unicode to have a "non-unicode equivalent", though, that might be interesting.
        DNF2 5y ago
        If libraries use unicode in their internals, it doesn't affect you or me. And I have yet to see in the wild any examples of unicode identifiers that are required for use. The closest thing i can think of is the composition operator in Base, though it has a somewhat awkward ascii equivalent. Do you have any example? As far as I know this is strongly discouraged in the community.
      - e12e 5y ago
        You can easily search for omega and lambda via vim slash(/) search command?
    - craftinator 5y ago
      I actually agree with this sentiment, using non-keyboard utf8 characters in code is just asking for massive problems down the line. A fun party trick perhaps, but such a bad idea for anything that isn't a hobby Project.
      - dnautics 5y ago
        I disagree, in that it's the opposite. You might want to put some internal calls in Unicode as a way to gatekeep contributors and users to people who are serious about using Julia. But if you think your project could be used by casual explorers, your public API better not have Unicode calls, or, at least provide sensible non-unicode aliases for unicode calls.
  - Karrot_Kream 5y ago
    Oh dang I didn't know this. Thanks, TIL!
- adgjlsfhk1 5y ago
  Yeah. Many editors (VS-code, julia repl, atom), support something very similar where I can type in `\ome` tab complete to `\omega` tab complete to ω. (similar completions exist for many other common unicode symbols).
- leephillips 5y ago
  In the Julia REPL you can type LaTeX commands for Greek letters and math symbols, and a <TAB> converts them to the actual character; so \mu<TAB> gets you a μ. Or you can just input the Unicode directly. I’m constantly doing such things everywhere, so the extra few keystrokes seem worth it to get code where the math looks a more like math. Using the mouse and a menu or character palette is the worst possible solution. EDIT: In general it makes sense to set up your keyboard with a compose key and a “dead Greek” key, and set up your Compose table so the shortcuts make sense to you. Then you can use an expanded set of symbols everywhere, including comment boxes like this one. You can even put things like your email address in your Compose table.
- vmladenov 5y ago
  If your editor doesn’t help, on macOS ^⌘Space brings up the character picker with the search bar focused for the keyboard, so you can just search the name of the symbol and enter.
- krick 5y ago
  That might be a problem with your tooling, but most likely not. I know how to do that in Linux (XCompose) and I've heard there are similar tools in both Windows and MacOS as well. So more likely just a problem of not being aware/proficient with using these tools properly. Typing λ² is 6 keystrokes for me, no touching mouse required. And while maybe not very illustrative in this post, I'd argue it's way more readable than lambda_squared when being a part of long and complex formula.
  - spicybright 5y ago
    Absolutely it's my lack of experience in tooling. Never had to type unicode symbols consistently.
qsi 5y ago
I think restraint and common sense are key here (once you're comfortable typing the non-ASCII characters). In parts of my code it's much more intuitive to use \Omega or \Sigma and \mu than giving them ASCII names, and others looking at my code will immediately understand what the matrices and vectors do. On the other hand, if you're going to use \mathfrak{i} to index a simple loop you're doing it wrong.

by moelf 5y ago

spicybright 5y ago

I definitely agree with this. It's just a pain to type out. Maybe I'm behind on this, but needing to use the mouse to find symbols in a huge menu is very painful. You can copy and paste too but again, huge break of flow. Do some editors support discord-style emoji syntax, where typing :fo would bring up a menu of emojis that might match foo. Then hitting enter inserts the emoji over the :foo: representation. You can also not use the auto complete menu. Ex. :pow2: might turn into ²

moelf 5y ago
Julia has the best REPL for this. You can \<type><tab> to type unicode symbol and emoji. Better yet, you can reverse look up how to type a thing: help?> χ²ᵢ "χ²ᵢ" can be typed by \chi<tab>\^2<tab>\_i<tab>
- dnautics 5y ago
  Yeah. Now go edit your code.
  - leephillips 5y ago
    I can edit it in Vim with no problem.
    - dnautics 5y ago
      Sure, because you have a julia plugin. Not every casual user trying out the language will bother, or want to bother installing someone else's plugin. They'll just hit a function call they need to make with a Unicode character, go WTF man, and give up.
      - leephillips 5y ago
        I don’t have a Julia plugin. I don’t even understand what you think the problem is.
      - bmn__ 5y ago
        > They'll just hit a function call they need to make with a Unicode character This is optional, the language adapts to the capability of the user. He can write ∑ or sum for a function, µ or mu for an identifier. https://docs.julialang.org/en/v1/manual/functions/ https://docs.julialang.org/en/v1/manual/functions/ You get people riled up in this thread with your false assumption, next time simply ask questions.
        dnautics 5y ago
        that's for stuff in the stdlib. You can't control library writers, and julia does not force a function identifier that is mapped to unicode to have a "non-unicode equivalent", though, that might be interesting.
        DNF2 5y ago
        If libraries use unicode in their internals, it doesn't affect you or me. And I have yet to see in the wild any examples of unicode identifiers that are required for use. The closest thing i can think of is the composition operator in Base, though it has a somewhat awkward ascii equivalent. Do you have any example? As far as I know this is strongly discouraged in the community.
    - e12e 5y ago
      You can easily search for omega and lambda via vim slash(/) search command?
  - craftinator 5y ago
    I actually agree with this sentiment, using non-keyboard utf8 characters in code is just asking for massive problems down the line. A fun party trick perhaps, but such a bad idea for anything that isn't a hobby Project.
    - dnautics 5y ago
      I disagree, in that it's the opposite. You might want to put some internal calls in Unicode as a way to gatekeep contributors and users to people who are serious about using Julia. But if you think your project could be used by casual explorers, your public API better not have Unicode calls, or, at least provide sensible non-unicode aliases for unicode calls.
- Karrot_Kream 5y ago
  Oh dang I didn't know this. Thanks, TIL!
adgjlsfhk1 5y ago
Yeah. Many editors (VS-code, julia repl, atom), support something very similar where I can type in `\ome` tab complete to `\omega` tab complete to ω. (similar completions exist for many other common unicode symbols).
leephillips 5y ago
In the Julia REPL you can type LaTeX commands for Greek letters and math symbols, and a <TAB> converts them to the actual character; so \mu<TAB> gets you a μ. Or you can just input the Unicode directly. I’m constantly doing such things everywhere, so the extra few keystrokes seem worth it to get code where the math looks a more like math. Using the mouse and a menu or character palette is the worst possible solution. EDIT: In general it makes sense to set up your keyboard with a compose key and a “dead Greek” key, and set up your Compose table so the shortcuts make sense to you. Then you can use an expanded set of symbols everywhere, including comment boxes like this one. You can even put things like your email address in your Compose table.
vmladenov 5y ago
If your editor doesn’t help, on macOS ^⌘Space brings up the character picker with the search bar focused for the keyboard, so you can just search the name of the symbol and enter.
krick 5y ago
That might be a problem with your tooling, but most likely not. I know how to do that in Linux (XCompose) and I've heard there are similar tools in both Windows and MacOS as well. So more likely just a problem of not being aware/proficient with using these tools properly. Typing λ² is 6 keystrokes for me, no touching mouse required. And while maybe not very illustrative in this post, I'd argue it's way more readable than lambda_squared when being a part of long and complex formula.
- spicybright 5y ago
  Absolutely it's my lack of experience in tooling. Never had to type unicode symbols consistently.

qsi 5y ago

I think restraint and common sense are key here (once you're comfortable typing the non-ASCII characters). In parts of my code it's much more intuitive to use \Omega or \Sigma and \mu than giving them ASCII names, and others looking at my code will immediately understand what the matrices and vectors do. On the other hand, if you're going to use \mathfrak{i} to index a simple loop you're doing it wrong.