[erlang-questions] Speaking of comments

[Jesper Louis Andersen]

On Mon, Dec 13, 2010 at 8:19 AM, Edmond Begumisa
<ebegumisa@REDACTED> wrote:

> I don't know about using non-ASCII for actual source-code as the author
> suggests. I'm not a language designer so I have no opinion this (though in
> relation to this, I've sometimes wondered about alternatives to programing
> languages revolving around English -- it must really irritate non-English
> speakers, especially those coming from languages using non-latin alphabets.)

If anyone is serious about moving from a ASCII/UTF8 text
representation of programs to something else, *now* is the time to
act. One reason I hate Java with a passion is that the language is
outright impossible to write in Vim or Emacs. You need IDE integration
which severely limits your options. In other words, you are not free
to pick your weapon of choice, but must choose something utterly
inferior like bent spoon or broken stick. Succinctness is power before
it gives you freedom to choose the weapon.

However, most of the weapons we use, be it vim or emacs, are rather
old and this hampers the format by which they can accept code. The
only way to break that problem is the appearance of a disruptive
technology which shuns the norm for something new. In this technology
you can write a collaborative text editor on the web and hopefully
make it as powerful, or more powerful, than emacs or vim. And only
then will there be a new weapon to wield - breaking the text-stream
input norm of programming languages.

And somehow, even with the emerging new devices and systems, I doubt
there is a chance it will happen despite.

-- 
J.