Bruno Medeiros wrote:
Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
Spacen Jasset wrote:
Bill Baxter wrote:
On Thu, Oct 23, 2008 at 7:27 AM, Andrei Alexandrescu
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Please vote up before the haters take it down, and discuss:
http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/78rjk/allowing_unicode_operators_in_d_similarly_to/
(My comment cross posted here from reddit)
I think the right way to do it is not to make everything Unicode. All
the pressure on the existing symbols would be dramatically relieved by
the addition of just a handful of new symbols.
The truth is keyboards aren't very good for inputting Unicode. That
isn't likely to change. Yes they've dealt with the problem in Asian
languages by using IMEs but in my opinion IMEs are horrible to use.
Some people seem to argue it's a waste to go to Unicode only for a few
symbols. If you're going to go Unicode, you should go whole hog. I'd
argue the exact opposite. If you're going to go Unicode, it should be
done in moderation. Use as little Unicode as necessary and no more.
As for how to input unicode -- Microsoft Word solved that problem ages
ago, assuming we're talking about small numbers of special characters.
It's called AutoCorrect. You just register your unicode symbol as a
misspelling for "(X)" or something unique like that and then every
time you type "(X)" a funky unicode character instantly replaces those
chars.
Yeh, not many editors support such a feature. But it's very easy to
implement. And with that one generic mechanism, your editor is ready
to support input of Unicode chars in any language just by adding the
right definitions.
--bb
I am not entirely sure that 30 or (x amount) of new operators would
be a good thing anyway. How hard is it to say m3 =
m1.crossProduct(m2) ? vs m3 = m1 X m2 ? and how often will that
happen? It's also going to make the language more difficult to learn
and understand.
I have noticed that in pretty much all scientific code, the f(a, b)
and a.f(b) notations fall off a readability cliff when the number of
operators grows only to a handful. Lured by simple examples like
yours, people don't see that as a problem until they actually have to
read or write such code. Adding temporaries and such is not that great
because it further takes the algorithm away from its mathematical form
just for serving a notation that was the problem in the first place.
But what operators would be added? Some mathematician programmers might
want vector and matrix operators, others set operators, others still
derivation/integration operators, and so on. Where would we stop?
I don't deny it might be useful for them, but it does seem like too
specific a need to integrate in the language.
Composition may be useful for functional programming (I've never used
any functional programming paradigm except "reduce".)
Matrix operations: + - * .tr() .inv() .det() etc are already sufficient
for most jobs.
Vector operations: Maybe an operator for cross product.
Set operators: Just use + - * (| ~ &) instead like Pascal.
So only 2 Unicode operators I see are really useful and the replacements
are ugly: Composition (o) and cross product (×).
