I think when people say it’s “unreadable” they kinda mean it’s unpronounceable. Maybe un-typeable. I can’t understand James Joyce, but at least I can type the words into a dictionary. Like with a normal, 104-key keyboard.
I mean, how many languages stick to ASCII characters? (like 99%) And how many don’t? It’s seemingly a worthwhile tradeoff (I’d say I’m more an APL admirer than hater), but I can’t pretend it doesn’t come at great cost. Who’s really in denial ?
The article is about K, so “untypeable” doesn’t really apply. Even when talking about Unicode-heavy languages, like APL or BQN, I’ve never understood why people get so hung up about this; inserting Unicode symbols is really a not a big hurdle in any modern editor. Yes, it’s probably unfamiliar, but other than that?
Plus, these symbols all have a pronounceable names, right (this is also mentioned in the article)? Instead of +/⍳10 I can just say (and read that expression as) “Plus reduce range 10”. In fact I can read +/ as “sum”, and (+/÷≢)⍳10 as “average range 10”, because chunking is very easy when one can squeeze so much into just a few characters.
The article is about K, so “untypeable” doesn’t really apply. Even when talking about Unicode-heavy languages, like APL or BQN, I’ve never understood why people get so hung up about this; inserting Unicode symbols is really a not a big hurdle in any modern editor. Yes, it’s probably unfamiliar, but other than that?
It’s not just that it’s hard to type. It’s also:
Hard to ctrl+f
Not necessarily supported by search engines
Takes conscious effort to enter: either you have to memorize the specific keybindings/translation string for each symbol, or use some GUI to insert symbols, etc
Don’t render well in all fonts
On top of that, every extra symbol is a bit of unfamiliarity to developers. We’re all comfortable with the standard ASCII because all other languages use them, but unicode doesn’t benefit from that shared vocabulary.
This is a problem if you’re looking to get larger adoption, because some people are more affected by this friction than others. I like using unicode operators!
Designing a language for larger adoption involves engineering compromises. You can’t design a language that is truly awesome, because you have to use ASCII, and you have to design a language that is nearly identical in syntax and semantics to popular languages so that it is “familiar”. So, in my opinion, why bother? There are far more languages designed for “larger adoption” than will ever be widely adopted; why add to this list? The future of programming language design that I want to see involves breaking free of the local minimum in the design landscape where most languages are currently stuck.
It’s totally fine to have that as your goal, but none of that changes the reasons why people get “hung up” on unicode operators. Believing the net benefits of unicode outweigh the drawbacks is different than believe there aren’t drawbacks.
I miss when the Orange Site was about “startup groupthink”!
Every day it becomes more like Reddit, thanks to the current moderator who manually unflag (!) all the political posts that align with their personal political orientation.
The outcome being some people getting banned or voluntarily quitting over such arbitrary moderation results in an echo chamber and also has a chilling effect.
Previously, on Lobste.rs: https://lobste.rs/s/apalf0/stages_denial_learning_k 54 points, 5 comments.
I think when people say it’s “unreadable” they kinda mean it’s unpronounceable. Maybe un-typeable. I can’t understand James Joyce, but at least I can type the words into a dictionary. Like with a normal, 104-key keyboard.
I mean, how many languages stick to ASCII characters? (like 99%) And how many don’t? It’s seemingly a worthwhile tradeoff (I’d say I’m more an APL admirer than hater), but I can’t pretend it doesn’t come at great cost. Who’s really in denial ?
The article is about K, so “untypeable” doesn’t really apply. Even when talking about Unicode-heavy languages, like APL or BQN, I’ve never understood why people get so hung up about this; inserting Unicode symbols is really a not a big hurdle in any modern editor. Yes, it’s probably unfamiliar, but other than that?
Plus, these symbols all have a pronounceable names, right (this is also mentioned in the article)? Instead of
+/⍳10I can just say (and read that expression as) “Plus reduce range 10”. In fact I can read+/as “sum”, and(+/÷≢)⍳10as “average range 10”, because chunking is very easy when one can squeeze so much into just a few characters.It’s not just that it’s hard to type. It’s also:
On top of that, every extra symbol is a bit of unfamiliarity to developers. We’re all comfortable with the standard ASCII because all other languages use them, but unicode doesn’t benefit from that shared vocabulary.
This is a problem if you’re looking to get larger adoption, because some people are more affected by this friction than others. I like using unicode operators!
Designing a language for larger adoption involves engineering compromises. You can’t design a language that is truly awesome, because you have to use ASCII, and you have to design a language that is nearly identical in syntax and semantics to popular languages so that it is “familiar”. So, in my opinion, why bother? There are far more languages designed for “larger adoption” than will ever be widely adopted; why add to this list? The future of programming language design that I want to see involves breaking free of the local minimum in the design landscape where most languages are currently stuck.
It’s totally fine to have that as your goal, but none of that changes the reasons why people get “hung up” on unicode operators. Believing the net benefits of unicode outweigh the drawbacks is different than believe there aren’t drawbacks.
I miss when the Orange Site was about “startup groupthink”!
Every day it becomes more like Reddit, thanks to the current moderator who manually unflag (!) all the political posts that align with their personal political orientation.
Please, Lobster, never fall into that temptation.
To paraphrase a famous quote about Reddit, one can say:
It sounds like you haven’t seen the result of political conversations on here yet ;)
The issue at hand isn’t the outcome, but the arbitrary way political subjects are allowed or not allowed.
The outcome being some people getting banned or voluntarily quitting over such arbitrary moderation results in an echo chamber and also has a chilling effect.
But that isn’t on here.
hahaha
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