> On Aug 29, 2017, at 4:57 AM, John Pratt via swift-evolution > <[email protected]> wrote: > > I sent a postal envelope to the Swift team with an article I wrote, arguing > that > symbols and graphics would push the programming language forward. > > Wouldn’t it be nice to have an actual multiplication matrix broken out into > code, > instead of typing, “matrix()”? It seems to me Swift has the chance to do > that. > > Also: why does "<==" still reside in code as "less than or equal to” when > there is a unicode equivalent that looks neat?
Hi John, while it may be visually appealing, can you imagine typing those in real-life programming? I can't. Reaching for Symbol Viewer each time I need to compare two ints is a bit impractical, don't you think? Yes, on some keyboard layouts (e.g. US), you can use Option-< to type ≤, but in general, this one keyboard layout out of many and also the other symbols suggested (union, etc.) are nowhere to be found on a keyboard. If you desire them, you can define custom operators, but it's IMHO impractical. It would require a radical redesign of the keyboard - and if you suggest the TouchBar, can you imagine symbols from your Fig. 6 on there and having to browse through them looking for the one you want? If you want to test using them, you can try this library that defines them: https://github.com/mattt/Euler > Why can’t the square of x have a superscript of 2 instead of having > “pow(x,2)? > I think this would make programming much easier to deal with. Sorry, but I personally think it would make programming slower. Person, who can type with all 10 of his fingers will outpace a person looking for math symbols on a TouchBar any time he need to use "greater than or equal"... > > I expound on this issue in my article: > > http://www.noctivagous.com/nct_graphics_symbols_prglngs_draft2-3-12.pdf > <http://www.noctivagous.com/nct_graphics_symbols_prglngs_draft2-3-12.pdf> > > Thank you for reading. > > > -John > _______________________________________________ > swift-evolution mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.swift.org/mailman/listinfo/swift-evolution
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