unicode as valid naming symbols

[David Hutto]

I personally believe that it becomes hard to have even a programming
language overcome cultural learning styles, and programmatic differences,
because of nurture vs nature.

We can all program something which results in a similar return value, but
overcoming the nurturing the internet provides, becomes an imperative.

I'll just offer a reference to avoid personal mistakes in explaining
something that relates to how programmers/computer scientists/electrical
engineers approach their end results, and why those end results may still
differ in the mentality of the individual, or group, outcome of developing
A.I. systems:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnolinguistics

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_anthropology

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_science

The latter probably explains what I mean in more depth than the two
formers.


On Mon, Mar 31, 2014 at 8:47 PM, Ian Kelly <ian.g.kelly at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Mon, Mar 31, 2014 at 1:31 PM, Antoon Pardon
> <antoon.pardon at rece.vub.ac.be> wrote:
> > Op 31-03-14 19:40, Ian Kelly schreef:
> >> That was an exaggeration on my part.  It wouldn't affect my job, as I
> >> wouldn't expect to ever actually have to maintain anything like the
> >> above.  My greater point though is that it damages Python's
> >> readability for no actual gain in my view.  There is nothing useful
> >> you can do with a name that is the U+1F4A9 character that you can't do
> >> just as easily with alphanumeric identifiers like pile_of_poo (or
> >> куча_фекалий if one prefers; that's auto-translated, so don't blame me
> >> if it's a poor translation). The kinds of symbols that we're talking
> >> about here aren't part of any writing systems, and so to incorporate
> >> them in *names* as if they were is an abuse of Unicode.
> >
> > Your argument doesn't has much weight. First of all it can be used
> > for just restricting names to the ascii range.
>
> I disagree.  Non-ASCII written names are useful to anybody who prefers
> not to do all their programming in English.
>
> > Second of all I
> > think a good chosen symbolic name can be more readable than a
> > name in a character set you are not familiar with. A good chosen
> > symbol will evoke a meaning with a lot of people. A name in a
> > character set you are not familiar with is just gibberish to
> > you.
>
> Well, this is the path taken by APL.  It has its supporters.  It's not
> known for being readable.
>
> >> I don't think the comparisons to decorators and the if-else operator
> >> are apt.
> >
> > I didn't make such a comparison. I just noted the arguments against
> > were similar.
>
> That's the comparison to which I was referring.
>
> >> First, because while those may degrade readability, they do
> >> so in a constrained way.  A decorator application is just the @ symbol
> >> and an identifier.
> >
> > And if abused, can totally change the working of your function. There
> > is no guarantee that the function returned, has any relation with the
> > original function. If that can't be a night mare for readability,
> > I don't know what is.
>
> As Terry Reedy noted, this has nothing to do with the decorator
> syntax, so it isn't much of an argument against having such syntax.
>
> >> The if-else is just three expressions separated by
> >> keywords.
> >
> > Yes but if used unrestrained in arbitrary expressions will make those
> > expressions hard to understand.
>
> I don't disagree.  I hardly ever use it myself, certainly only if it
> can fit comfortably into one line, which is rare.  But it's still
> quite limited in syntactic scope.
>
> >> In the case of arbitrary Unicode identifiers, we're talking
> >> about approximately doubling the number of different characters (out
> >> of a continuously growing set) that could be used, many of which are
> >> easily confused with other characters. Of course the potential for
> >> confusion already exists, but that's no justification for aggravating
> >> it.
> >
> > So what if we double the number of different characters? I don't care
> > about the number of them, I care about how meaningful they are. And
> > as you say confusion is already possible. A good programmer knows
> > how to deal with such a possible confusion, that the number of
> > cases increases, doesn't need to be a problem for those that care
> > about this.
>
> So tell me then, how would you deal with it?  In the case of script
> identifiers, it's often not hard to discern from context whether a
> particular character is e.g. a Latin h or a Cyrillic һ.  Assuming the
> original author wasn't being intentionally obfuscatory, if the rest of
> the identifier is Cyrillic then the character is probably also
> Cyrillic.  If it's a one-character identifier, then hopefully the rest
> of the module is consistent and you can guess from that.  If the
> identifier in question is just one symbol though, then you have a lot
> less context.
>
> >
> >> Second, at least in the case of decorators, while I don't dispute that
> >> they can harm readability, I think that in the majority of cases they
> >> actually help it.
> >
> > But that is not a fair comparison now, is it. What you are doing here
> > is comparing actual use, to a worst case doom scenario.
>
> I contend that there is no scenario with arbitrary Unicode identifiers
> where readability is improved.
> --
> https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
>



-- 
Best Regards,
David Hutto
*CEO:* *http://www.hitwebdevelopment.com <http://www.hitwebdevelopment.com>*
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