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> I found myself spending time wondering "what characters is this made of?", and "how do I type THAT?" when viewing some existing code, and "WTF is this?" when
by michaelcampbell 5y ago
> I found myself spending time wondering "what characters is this made of?", and "how do I type THAT?" when viewing some existing code, and "WTF is this?" when a ligature that would have likely made sense in Ruby or Haskell (or in APL?) made it into my Perl code.
I guess everyone's got their thing, but on that paragraph I have to say my experience with ligature'd fonts in programming has led me to wonder the same thing... never.
I don't say this over some love of them; I'm fickle and change fonts about quarterly; some with ligatures some not, but I can't think of a single instance of WTF or actual confusion.
- nitrogen 5y agoSymbol-dense languages and coding styles, especially those that differ from the mindset of the font designer, are probably more likely to trigger spurious ligatures.
- WorldMaker 5y agoYeah, I'd imagine Perl development is pretty much the exact worst case for programming font ligatures both as a code developer and a font developer (accidentally creating ligatures the font never intended to exist in strange runs of symbols). Especially in how much Perl development exists that treats spaces as rare/unnecessary/optional.
- Shorel 5y agoEven without ligatures, Perl code makes you say: "WTF is this?" more often than any other language I have tried.
- WorldMaker 5y agoA classic joke I've heard is that Perl is the closest to a "write only" programming language that has escaped into mainstream usage.