Re: UTF-8 identifiers [was: Re: Lua t-shirts]

[Kenneth Forsbäck <kenneth.forsback@...>]

If these would-be programmers are so young they have problems using 
Latin/ASCII, then they shouldn't be learning Lua, or any other 
programming language for that matter.

I strongly doubt this is of any serious concern. Possible useful for 
someone, but I would strongly recommend AGAINST it.

To me there are exactly 63 literal characters (damn it, I need one 
more!), 26 lowercase, 26 uppercase, 10 numbers, underscore (and I want 
one more, damn it!). Preferrably no dinstinction between case.

If you cannot program using these 63 (64 *sigh*) characters (not 
including operators or other special characters), either your mind, or 
the programming language you are using is broken. Period.

Simple, clean, regular, strict.

No trouble, no confusion, no fuss, no shit, no nothing.

Using UTF in strings or comments is ok (although preferrably comments 
should be in english to be more accessible), but if UTF is allowed in 
names, you could just as well let lose the demons of hell, a big sign on 
your arse that says, "free entry for demons" ^~^

No offence, but I think this is pretty pointless.

"Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler."
-- Einstein

This is akin to the GOTO problem. If you can't deal with/don't want the 
trouble associated with GOTO, don't include it in your language. Simply 
put, don't paint the devil on the wall.

Only my personal opinion.

Kenneth

Jerome Vuarand wrote:
> 2009/10/5 Enrico Colombini <erix@erix.it>:
> > Jerome Vuarand wrote:
> > > Being able to use accented letters or even non-roman characters would
> > > be a useful tool to teach programming to people not speaking english.
> > ...or just contribute to their confusion. You don't probably know how many
> > Italians type the wrong accent on the letter 'e' while just writing. Many
> > don't even know that there are two different accents.
> >
> > I found no difficulty in teaching programming to non-english people using
> > ASCII... and I suspect the Lua authors didn't either :-)
>
> Italian and portuguese use alphabets based on the latin one, as do
> most european languages, and most of these alphabets letters have a
> very similar cousin in ASCII. But think about Russian, Chinese or
> Japanese people. While most can use a roman alphabet, many (especially
> the young) may be more comfortable with their local characters.