5 ms·

Is ASCII the best product we have coming out of a "designed by a committee" process?

by bhaak 4y ago

karmakaze 4y ago
Would you have preferred EBCDIC?
- bhaak 4y ago
  Hell, no. I was just wondering if there was an even better product of a design by committee. ASCII is pretty good for its time and how it was created.
  - karmakaze 4y ago
    Unicode kept the ASCII part, so no? The only thing I found weird is the non-printable DEL 127 character being where it is.
    - Beltalowda 4y ago
      On punchcards having it as the highest character (with all holes punched) is the only way you can reliably do "delete" or "ignore" outside of having a special dedicated hole for it.
    - kps 4y ago
      DEL derives from earlier teletypewriter codes, and is based on the use of paper tape. All bits set means all holes punched, so it's the only code that can eliminate any other code.
  - db48x 4y ago
    Common Lisp was designed by a committee, and is widely regarded as an excellent language (or at least an excellent Lisp). It even has principles that it sticks to throughout. For example, it is deliberately designed to be a multi–paradigm language, allowing the user to write programs in functional, imperative, or object–oriented styles without forcing one or the other.
zokier 4y ago
Ascii is the reason why we have teletype control signals in our text files; I wouldn't call it particularly good solution for what it ended up being used as. Some sort of cleaner separation of control signals and data payload would imho been better
- wombatpm 4y ago
  That’s only a complaint for people who use CSV. If you use the ascii characters for record, file, unit, and group there are no problems with data payload
  - zokier 4y ago
    > If you use the ascii characters for record, file, unit, and group there are no problems with data payload Unless your data happens to contain record, file, unit, group separators... Which is kinda the whole problem; ASCII does not have any proper separation/layering between the data and control characters.
    - rep_lodsb 4y ago
      If your fields are supposed to be human-readable text, there might be a reason for them containing tabs, but not these control characters. Obviously you need a more elaborate protocol for embedding arbitrary data, but ASCII isn't the right place to define that.
      - bhaak 4y ago
        The TAB character is not any different from the separator control characters. It is as non human readable as the other ones. It's just that it got more support historically. If e.g. Microsoft had used the separator control characters for CSV you can bet those control characters would have even better support than TAB does today.
- bhaak 4y ago
  When ASCII was designed teletype like applications were still prevalent. Lots of printing instead of outputting to displays. Nowadays, it's of course a bit wasteful that of the first 32 characters of the most used character set only about one third is still being used. And it's pretty sad that the separators control characters are not used. We could have a much better CSV with them instead of the error prone CSV we have know. But FWIW I almost daily use BEL.

Is ASCII the best product we have coming out of a "designed by a committee" process?

by bhaak 4y ago

Is ASCII the best product we have coming out of a "designed by a committee" process?

karmakaze 4y ago

Would you have preferred EBCDIC?

bhaak 4y ago
Hell, no. I was just wondering if there was an even better product of a design by committee. ASCII is pretty good for its time and how it was created.
- karmakaze 4y ago
  Unicode kept the ASCII part, so no? The only thing I found weird is the non-printable DEL 127 character being where it is.
  - Beltalowda 4y ago
    On punchcards having it as the highest character (with all holes punched) is the only way you can reliably do "delete" or "ignore" outside of having a special dedicated hole for it.
  - kps 4y ago
    DEL derives from earlier teletypewriter codes, and is based on the use of paper tape. All bits set means all holes punched, so it's the only code that can eliminate any other code.
- db48x 4y ago
  Common Lisp was designed by a committee, and is widely regarded as an excellent language (or at least an excellent Lisp). It even has principles that it sticks to throughout. For example, it is deliberately designed to be a multi–paradigm language, allowing the user to write programs in functional, imperative, or object–oriented styles without forcing one or the other.

zokier 4y ago

Ascii is the reason why we have teletype control signals in our text files; I wouldn't call it particularly good solution for what it ended up being used as. Some sort of cleaner separation of control signals and data payload would imho been better

wombatpm 4y ago
That’s only a complaint for people who use CSV. If you use the ascii characters for record, file, unit, and group there are no problems with data payload
- zokier 4y ago
  > If you use the ascii characters for record, file, unit, and group there are no problems with data payload Unless your data happens to contain record, file, unit, group separators... Which is kinda the whole problem; ASCII does not have any proper separation/layering between the data and control characters.
  - rep_lodsb 4y ago
    If your fields are supposed to be human-readable text, there might be a reason for them containing tabs, but not these control characters. Obviously you need a more elaborate protocol for embedding arbitrary data, but ASCII isn't the right place to define that.
    - bhaak 4y ago
      The TAB character is not any different from the separator control characters. It is as non human readable as the other ones. It's just that it got more support historically. If e.g. Microsoft had used the separator control characters for CSV you can bet those control characters would have even better support than TAB does today.
bhaak 4y ago
When ASCII was designed teletype like applications were still prevalent. Lots of printing instead of outputting to displays. Nowadays, it's of course a bit wasteful that of the first 32 characters of the most used character set only about one third is still being used. And it's pretty sad that the separators control characters are not used. We could have a much better CSV with them instead of the error prone CSV we have know. But FWIW I almost daily use BEL.