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When it comes to really supporting non-english languages well, you kinda do have to know gory details of Unicode. (I had to.) Otherwise, stuff will mysteriously

by ploxiln 12y ago

When it comes to really supporting non-english languages well, you kinda do have to know gory details of Unicode. (I had to.) Otherwise, stuff will mysteriously not work, and you won't know what to do. OS X / Windows filenames will surprise you. Python on OS X / Windows will surprise you. Javascript will surprise you. URLs will surprise you. There's a lot of surprises in store. If you have some real-time large-ish-data need, you'll need to evaluate your options based on how they manage concurrency and locking. You may even have to implement a custom cache or archive layer. (I had to.) I'll admit, I haven't dealt with SVG rendering, and it wasn't important to any company I've worked for. In cases like that, you can say "whatever, fast enough on today's computers, this one doesn't work so I'll replace it with a png." But if you really need stuff to work right, if you want it done right, you don't have to do it all yourself, but you do have to understand it all yourself, otherwise you can't correctly choose and marshall the pieces that do it. EDIT: I feel like adding an addendum: yes, the specific views described in OP are historic relics. Still... the number of levels that exist today between do-it-yourself c programming with an alternative/minimal libc, and a ruby/rails/activerecord/auth-gems/assets-gems project, is really amazing.

bandrami 12y ago
the number of levels that exist today between do-it-yourself c programming with an alternative/minimal libc Turtles all the way down. I'm working right now own an OS-less Forth system to run on a SoC, and keep thinking "man, how much easier would this be if I had a kernel and a library!" Meanwhile, somebody else is probably working on a pure logic processor and thinking "wow, I wish I had a full SoC to work with..."
hobarrera 12y ago
All these surprises you get with non-english characters is exactly why it needs to be abstracted and handled at another level so why don't need to know how they all that works.

by ploxiln 12y ago

bandrami 12y ago

the number of levels that exist today between do-it-yourself c programming with an alternative/minimal libc Turtles all the way down. I'm working right now own an OS-less Forth system to run on a SoC, and keep thinking "man, how much easier would this be if I had a kernel and a library!" Meanwhile, somebody else is probably working on a pure logic processor and thinking "wow, I wish I had a full SoC to work with..."

hobarrera 12y ago

All these surprises you get with non-english characters is exactly why it needs to be abstracted and handled at another level so why don't need to know how they all that works.