On Thu, May 21, 2020 at 4:09 PM Thierry Parmentelat < thierry.parmente...@inria.fr> wrote:
> > > > On 21 May 2020, at 15:45, Alex Hall <alex.moj...@gmail.com> wrote: > > > > Many (probably most) people are going to come across a unicode symbol > having previously only encountered ASCII symbols and probably thinking that > was the only option. That includes all currently experienced Python > programmers who aren't up to date on the latest news, and all beginners who > learned using anything but the most up to date material. Even after this > feature has been around for a while, many (most?) new learning materials > will not include unicode symbols because authors don't want to go through > the extra effort to write those symbols. > > I’m having a hard time with statements like > > Many (probably most) people are going to come across a unicode symbol > having previously only encountered ASCII symbols > > clearly the experienced Python programmers are not the main target here > our 7-year old schoolboys are used to typing é's and ç and ü’s and À’s, > and this is Europe, not China, so... > > what was the point of defining unicode in the first place then ? What I mean is that they would only have seen ASCII symbols used for Python syntax i.e. not counting the contents of strings. Currently that's the experience of 100% of all Python coders. That percentage will drop a little if and when this feature is announced, but not much, and from there it can only decrease gradually. Again, if I saw a unicode arrow used as syntax on GitHub or something in the wild right now, I would think it's an error, which incidentally would be correct. Wouldn't you? That will be the experience of anyone who sees this before learning about it, and that will always include some beginners.
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