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The ASCII character set standardization and subsequent keyboards has had a huge impact on programming languages. Characters not found on a standard keyboard are

The ASCII character set standardization and subsequent keyboards has had a huge impact on programming languages. Characters not found on a standard keyboard are hardly ever used. And if thy are, it cause lots of issues, because they are so hard to type. I hope we get cheap reconfigurable keyboards with oled key caps in the near future. It could revitalize programming language design using a more powerful syntax with symbols etc.

chess_buster 4y ago
People will use something like |> and make a ligature for it in the font, that looks like this ▷. and that's it. However, have you seen this: https://fluxkeyboard.com https://fluxkeyboard.com
- rbanffy 4y ago
  They'll do it now, the same way in some ST's you wrote := and it got translated to a left-pointing-arrow. Let's not forget that in the early 80's, more than 8 bits per character was something that almost never happened.
  - tragomaskhalos 4y ago
    Objectworks (iirc) used := but left it as is ie 'untranslated'
readthenotes1 4y ago
The first Smalltalk-80 used still required the left arrow for assignment. It was a real PITA because it was underbar (_, shift-dash) on the keyboard iirc. Any assignment made me want to drink, thus the character name.
- jecel 4y ago
  In some equipment, like the Teletype Model 33[1], you had left arrow and up arrow instead of _ and ^. This was part of the 1963 draft of ASCII, but was changed in the final version. In the early 1980s there was still a lot of equipment by DEC and Xerox stuck with the original version, which was what the creators of Smalltalk-80 were familiar with. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bit-paired_keyboard https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bit-paired_keyboard
- slim 4y ago
  Cuis smalltalk has left arrow gliph for assignement assigned to underbar. I did not know it is historically accurate, thanks! :raises his cup:
FullyFunctional 4y ago
Having lived part of the early history, I'd counter that this was a very good thing indeed. ASCII provided some sanity and allowed ideas to spread and proliferate. We can revisit the character sets now that Unicode is ubiquitous. As for typing non-ASCII characters, that has been daily practices for decades _outside_ of north America.
- anthk 4y ago
  Eh, wait. Maybe for comments and strings, but we, the non-ASCII language users such as Spanish, avoided to put ñ's and accented chars as _code_ almost as a religious dogma. Tildes in Spanish are just used to mark the stressed syllabe when it's outside the stressing rules, and the diaeresis it's to make the 'u' non silent in gue/gui/que/qui. So if we read "funcion" without being written "función", don't worry, we aren't writting a literary test, it's code. I'd hate to debug code written in Chinese instead of English, even if English it's a language I just use in academical and technical environments (and some nerdy games translated from Japanese or classical retro games from Unix workstations, playing either Trek or Slashem it's not reading Oscar Wilde or Shakespeare). And Golang allows that I think, and lots of languages too.
  - tragomaskhalos 4y ago
    Believe you meant to write that _accents_ are used to mark stress that's outside the normal rules
    - anthk 4y ago
      That's what I meant.

chess_buster 4y ago

People will use something like |> and make a ligature for it in the font, that looks like this ▷. and that's it. However, have you seen this: https://fluxkeyboard.com https://fluxkeyboard.com

rbanffy 4y ago
They'll do it now, the same way in some ST's you wrote := and it got translated to a left-pointing-arrow. Let's not forget that in the early 80's, more than 8 bits per character was something that almost never happened.
- tragomaskhalos 4y ago
  Objectworks (iirc) used := but left it as is ie 'untranslated'

readthenotes1 4y ago

The first Smalltalk-80 used still required the left arrow for assignment. It was a real PITA because it was underbar (_, shift-dash) on the keyboard iirc. Any assignment made me want to drink, thus the character name.

jecel 4y ago
In some equipment, like the Teletype Model 33[1], you had left arrow and up arrow instead of _ and ^. This was part of the 1963 draft of ASCII, but was changed in the final version. In the early 1980s there was still a lot of equipment by DEC and Xerox stuck with the original version, which was what the creators of Smalltalk-80 were familiar with. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bit-paired_keyboard https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bit-paired_keyboard
slim 4y ago
Cuis smalltalk has left arrow gliph for assignement assigned to underbar. I did not know it is historically accurate, thanks! :raises his cup:

FullyFunctional 4y ago

Having lived part of the early history, I'd counter that this was a very good thing indeed. ASCII provided some sanity and allowed ideas to spread and proliferate. We can revisit the character sets now that Unicode is ubiquitous. As for typing non-ASCII characters, that has been daily practices for decades _outside_ of north America.

anthk 4y ago
Eh, wait. Maybe for comments and strings, but we, the non-ASCII language users such as Spanish, avoided to put ñ's and accented chars as _code_ almost as a religious dogma. Tildes in Spanish are just used to mark the stressed syllabe when it's outside the stressing rules, and the diaeresis it's to make the 'u' non silent in gue/gui/que/qui. So if we read "funcion" without being written "función", don't worry, we aren't writting a literary test, it's code. I'd hate to debug code written in Chinese instead of English, even if English it's a language I just use in academical and technical environments (and some nerdy games translated from Japanese or classical retro games from Unix workstations, playing either Trek or Slashem it's not reading Oscar Wilde or Shakespeare). And Golang allows that I think, and lots of languages too.
- tragomaskhalos 4y ago
  Believe you meant to write that _accents_ are used to mark stress that's outside the normal rules
  - anthk 4y ago
    That's what I meant.