Re: [OFFTOPIC] Re: Invoking a function from a list of functions

[Rusi]

On Tuesday, November 20, 2018 at 4:42:06 AM UTC+5:30, Stefan Monnier wrote:
> > I'm simply suggesting that for most programmers, the beauty of reading
> > a non-alphabetic programming language is not worth the hassle of
> > learning to type it.  As evidence, I give you APL: every successor
> > dropped the exotic character set, despite being invented since the
> > advent of Unicode and bitmapped displays.  
> 
> FWIW, in the Agda language, it's very common to use non-ASCII characters
> which are input (in agda-mode) via a variant of the TeX input method.
> The reason this is tolerated is because those chars are already familiar
> to most users because they're used on paper for the same purpose.

I did not want to bring in Agda since I think it botches up unicode input with
over enthusiasm [I dont know much Agda FWIW]

However the number of ways of doing unicode badly should be combinatorially 
larger
than the number of ways of doing it right

Heres python3 compared to elisp


ELISP> (setq flag "hi")
"hi"
ELISP> (setq flag "there")
"there"
ELISP> (list flag flag)
("hi" "there")

ELISP> (setq á "hi")
"hi"
ELISP>  (setq á "there")
"there"
ELISP>  (list á á)

Python

>>> flag = 1
>>> flag = 2
>>> (flag, flag)
(2, 2)

>>> á = 1
>>> á = 2
>>> (á, á)
(2, 2)

In my view python does it right(er) than elisp (Haskell is in elisp category)
where "right" is defined by :identifiers should identify



However when push comes to shove both python and elisp are equally bad

>>> Α = "hi"
>>> A = "there"
>>> (Α,A)
('hi', 'there')


ELISP>  (setq Α "hi")
"hi"
ELISP>  (setq A "there")
"there"
ELISP>  (list Α A)
("hi" "there")

which brings me to…

On Tuesday, November 20, 2018 at 3:54:00 AM UTC+5:30, James K. Lowden wrote:
> On Sat, 17 Nov 2018 07:59:49 -0800 (PST)
> Rusi wrote:
> > IOW You are already using a non-trivial input method.
> 
> Actually, it is a trival input method.  Nearly all keyboards have
> symbol emblazoned on each key; exceptions are rare [1].  The user
> expects each key to produce one of two characters associated with each
> key.  That, I would say, is about as trivial as it gets.  

Notice how anglo-centric above is??
If you find ‘A’ an ‘a’ as trivially the same
what do you say about ‘A’ and ‘Α’??

PS Just to be clear: I am no fan of liberalism multi-culturalism and all that 
jazz; just pointing out that all modern programming languages are falling over
each other to be more virtuous
Even C seems to have something called extended identifiers¿?