[erlang-questions] A proposal for Unicode variable and atom names in Erlang.

Yurii Rashkovskii yrashk@REDACTED
Mon Oct 22 08:23:03 CEST 2012


If you need mathematical symbols, I suppose you're more in a Haskell
land. Besides, I don't even know how to type δ in (besides
copy-pasting).

I mean, realistically, do we need unfamiliar characters to start
appearing in somebody's code who thinks it's a smart idea to do so?
What happened to the principle of the least astonishment?

Non-latin users who don't know English somehow manage to use english
function names and keywords. It's a slippery slope to suggest we need
to cater to everybody's wish to program in their native language.
Isn't English a lingua franca of software development that allows us
to communicate better? If it wasn't, think about how emptier the space
would have been.

On Sun, Oct 21, 2012 at 11:00 PM, Anthony Ramine <n.oxyde@REDACTED> wrote:
> A good reason is mathematical symbols. If I read a functional pearl
> which defines a function δ, I do want to name it as such.
>
> Also non-latin users who don't know English should be able to use
> atoms and variables they understand.
>
> On Mon, Oct 22, 2012 at 7:08 AM, Yurii Rashkovskii <yrashk@REDACTED> wrote:
>> Richard,
>>
>> Please excuse my ignorance, but can you name a single good reason for
>> non-latin atoms and variable names? From my personal point of view, this is
>> a sure road to hell.



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