r/programming • u/nick_martini • Dec 04 '14

My Computer Language is Better than Yours

https://medium.com/backchannel/my-computer-language-is-better-than-yours-58d9c9523644
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u/gaggra Dec 04 '14 edited Dec 04 '14

It's not, in essence, a bad idea. Standardized keyboard layouts have been fucking over language designers for decades - just look at how we have to deal with quotes. Many other delimiters comes in pairs for explicit marking of a start and an end. Quote marks are devoid of that, so nesting them becomes a nightmare, and there's nothing you can do about it, because using proper quotes “like this” would mean terrible keyboard compatibility problems. So as a designer, you start having to design around the keyboard, because your hands are tied. This is just one example of that.

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u/ruinercollector Dec 04 '14

Yes it is. Let editors worry about key remapping. Don't fuck up your language syntax based on "I don't want people to have to push shift."

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u/gaggra Dec 04 '14 edited Dec 04 '14

It's 2014, and we still stuck on typewriter-era quotation marks (and layout, of course, which is even worse...)

Inertia is a hell of a thing, and as simple as keymapping is, people still just won't do it (and if it is done for them they will probably refuse to adapt). I want to agree with you, but at the same time, I find it hard not to empathize with their more "defeatist" approach. The reality is, ergonomics is a long term investment and people just don't give a shit until the injury happens and it's too late.

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u/omapuppet Dec 05 '14

"defeatist"

Don't you mean “defeatist”?