Why UTF-8/16 character encodings?
Jakob Ovrum
jakobovrum at gmail.com
Wed May 29 02:42:13 PDT 2013
On Monday, 27 May 2013 at 23:05:46 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:
> I've recently come to the opinion that that's a bad idea, and D
> should not support it.
Honestly, removing support for non-ASCII characters from
identifiers is the worst idea you've had in a while. There is an
_unfathomable amount_ of code out there written in non-English
languages but hamfisted into an English-alphabet representation
because the programming language doesn't care to support it. The
resulting friction is considerable.
You seem to attribute particular value to personal anecdotes, so
here's one of mine: I personally know several prestigious
universities in Europe and Asia which teach programming using
Java and/or C with identifiers being in an English-alphabet
representation of the native non-English language. Using the
English language for identifiers is usually a sanctioned
alternative, but not the primary modus operandi. I also know
several professional programmers using their native non-English
language for identifiers in production code.
Please reconsider.
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