The Raku Programming Language

[topspin]

@Kamil-Podlesak said in The Raku Programming Language:

is the Mac version of german keyboard layout, which is needlessly different for no reason and the desinger pricks refuse to print the characters on the keys.

Good luck figuring out where [, ] have gone compared to a PC layout, because printing it on there would be too ugly.

[bobjanova]

Regarding 'I don't know how to type ÷' - If you're in an environment where you need to type it, you set up a keyboard that lets you type it. IBM mainframes back in the day had a physical APL keyboard with the symbols printed on them, for example. In modern times APL development environments have a keyboard map (typically mapping symbols to Ctrl+ or AltGr+). You can install custom keyboards on Windows so you can type them anywhere. It then becomes no more difficult to type the symbols you use regularly than it is to type * or even A (and easier than { if you're German ...).

The idea that keyboard layouts are fixed and only the symbols that were picked to print on the keys in 1980 should be easy to type is another relic of the 8 (or 7) bit past.

I can't type "ą" on my keyboard, either. But I bet Gąska can.

[Kamil Podlesak]

@topspin said in The Raku Programming Language:

@Kamil-Podlesak said in The Raku Programming Language:

is the Mac version of german keyboard layout, which is needlessly different for no reason and the desinger pricks refuse to print the characters on the keys.

Good luck figuring out where [, ] have gone compared to a PC layout, because printing it on there would be too ugly.

This is not really Mac-specific. I suppose most german keyboards these days have three or more rows on them, but I I have seen quite a number of PC keyboards without square/curly brackets. I distinctly remember such keyboards from early 90s (AT keyboards). How did people use that in DOS era??

[Gąska]

@bobjanova said in The Raku Programming Language:

The idea that keyboard layouts are fixed and only the symbols that were picked to print on the keys in 1980 should be easy to type is another relic of the 8 (or 7) bit past.

It has less to do with the past and more to do with human memory. There's only so many unlabeled key combos people are going to remember. That's also why 99% of incredibly useful keyboard shortcuts remain unused by 99% of people.

@bobjanova said in The Raku Programming Language:

I can't type "ą" on my keyboard, either. But I bet Gąska can.

It's not written on the keyboard, but it's been AltGr+A since times immemorial. Polish keyboard layout is identical to US layout, just with a few AltGr combos for the funny letters. We're lucky to only have one funny variant for each Latin letter, except ż and ź, which are written AltGr+Z and AltGr+X respectively (X was chosen because it's close to Z).

[HardwareGeek]

@loopback0 said in The Raku Programming Language:

@dkf said in The Raku Programming Language:

use Emacs

No-one should do that though.

QFT!

[dcon]

@Gurth said in The Raku Programming Language:

in everyday life, people write × for a multiplication symbol.

No they don't. Only computer geeks who know unicode do. Normal people write x.

[PleegWat]

@loopback0 said in The Raku Programming Language:

@dkf said in The Raku Programming Language:

use Emacs

No-one should do that though.

Yeah! ViM forever!

[dcon]

@dkf said in The Raku Programming Language:

@pie_flavor said in The Raku Programming Language:

Sort-of! You can interpolate regexes in other regexes: / <rx1> <rx2> <rx3> / And, because of being able to insert code in regexes, and being able to return new regexes to interpolate from that code, this means you can dynamically construct them at runtime, and then use them as grammar Rule objects.

That's not sounding like a regular expression engine any more, and rather like a general programmable turing machine.

@HardwareGeek said in The Raku Programming Language:

Now you have 2n! problems.

I believe that is an underestimation.

2^n!
@HardwareGeek just had some html typos.

[Gąska]

@boomzilla said in The Raku Programming Language:

@Carnage said in The Raku Programming Language:

@Gurth said in The Raku Programming Language:

@topspin said in The Raku Programming Language:

Actually, I'd argue that while * clearly means multipliation, × would rather confuse me. That's a cross product to me, a normal scalar multiplication would be ·.

Tell that to people who do not have a background in mathematics or related fields: in everyday life, people write × for a multiplication symbol. Like I said, programming is a niche field when it comes to computer use, but keyboards still reflect the time when it was the main use for computers.

I was taught · as the multiplication symbol from the very start in school, and using the × from calculators would end up with the teacher telling you that that is wrong.
It wasn't till much later we were told what × is used for. So most people in Sweden should recognise · as the multiplication symbol at least, even if they don't use it and don't know what × mean.

I think we started using × (in 2nd grade or so) but moved to the · once we hit (pre)algebra when you're likely to have actual xs hanging around.

By the time we've had systems of equations, we've stopped using any symbol at all. If there's nothing between two numbers, it's multiplication.

[boomzilla]

@bobjanova said in The Raku Programming Language:

Regarding 'I don't know how to type ÷' - If you're in an environment where you need to type it, you set up a keyboard that lets you type it.

Or I avoid that environment because it's inconvenient for no good reason.

[boomzilla]

@Gąska said in The Raku Programming Language:

@boomzilla said in The Raku Programming Language:

@Carnage said in The Raku Programming Language:

@Gurth said in The Raku Programming Language:

@topspin said in The Raku Programming Language:

Actually, I'd argue that while * clearly means multipliation, × would rather confuse me. That's a cross product to me, a normal scalar multiplication would be ·.

Tell that to people who do not have a background in mathematics or related fields: in everyday life, people write × for a multiplication symbol. Like I said, programming is a niche field when it comes to computer use, but keyboards still reflect the time when it was the main use for computers.

I was taught · as the multiplication symbol from the very start in school, and using the × from calculators would end up with the teacher telling you that that is wrong.
It wasn't till much later we were told what × is used for. So most people in Sweden should recognise · as the multiplication symbol at least, even if they don't use it and don't know what × mean.

I think we started using × (in 2nd grade or so) but moved to the · once we hit (pre)algebra when you're likely to have actual xs hanging around.

By the time we've had systems of equations, we've stopped using any symbol at all. If there's nothing between two numbers, it's multiplication.

Between a number and some other symbol (letters and parentheses mostly) we did that too but between numbers doesn't sound so good. Very ambiguous, especially in handwriting (as opposed to typeset in a book or worksheet).

[Gąska]

@boomzilla said in The Raku Programming Language:

@Gąska said in The Raku Programming Language:

@boomzilla said in The Raku Programming Language:

@Carnage said in The Raku Programming Language:

@Gurth said in The Raku Programming Language:

@topspin said in The Raku Programming Language:

Actually, I'd argue that while * clearly means multipliation, × would rather confuse me. That's a cross product to me, a normal scalar multiplication would be ·.

Tell that to people who do not have a background in mathematics or related fields: in everyday life, people write × for a multiplication symbol. Like I said, programming is a niche field when it comes to computer use, but keyboards still reflect the time when it was the main use for computers.

I was taught · as the multiplication symbol from the very start in school, and using the × from calculators would end up with the teacher telling you that that is wrong.
It wasn't till much later we were told what × is used for. So most people in Sweden should recognise · as the multiplication symbol at least, even if they don't use it and don't know what × mean.

I think we started using × (in 2nd grade or so) but moved to the · once we hit (pre)algebra when you're likely to have actual xs hanging around.

By the time we've had systems of equations, we've stopped using any symbol at all. If there's nothing between two numbers, it's multiplication.

Between a number and some other symbol (letters and parentheses mostly) we did that too but between numbers doesn't sound so good.

I used "numbers" generally for any numeric value - digits, variables, parenthesized expressions. Yes, two digits would be awkward, and we kept using dot for it - but it's surprisingly rare problem in practice. I've only done it a handful of times throughout high school and college, and it was mostly on physics and physics-related classes.

[dkf]

@Gąska said in The Raku Programming Language:

By the time we've had systems of equations, we've stopped using any symbol at all. If there's nothing between two numbers, it's multiplication.

The problem with this is that it leads mathematicians into being very keen on single-letter symbols in their code, and once they start running out of letters, they reach for the funny fonts long before they consider using multiple letters for their variables…

[Gąska]

@dkf you're thinking of physicists. Mathematicians use subscripts a lot. And all kinds of diacritics and other overlays. It's still impossible to read, but in a different way.

[topspin]

@Gąska said in The Raku Programming Language:

@dkf you're thinking of physicists. Mathematicians use subscripts a lot. And all kinds of diacritics and other overlays. It's still impossible to read, but in a different way.

The mathematicians I'm dealing with use x, x, X, 𝒳, and probably a few others all with different meaning. Of course they also combine with x̂, x̄, x̃, x̊, and all that stuff, so you're both right.

Edit: Well, those composed characters render like shit.

[dfdub]

@topspin
Ugh, yeah, I hate that. By the time you read the third definition of the same symbol, with the only visible difference being formatting, you want to go back in time and slap the author before he manages to submit the paper.

[Gurth]

@Carnage said in The Raku Programming Language:

I was taught · as the multiplication symbol from the very start in school

It was × here, I only learned about · as a multiplication operator in secondary school, age 12.

@marczellm said in The Raku Programming Language:

@Gurth said in The Raku Programming Language:

in everyday life, people write × for a multiplication symbol.

Except for everyday people in everyday life typing the letter x in Word documents, always.

That’s because they don’t know there’s a difference, and highly likely won’t care when it’s pointed out to them (which I already addressed earlier). In handwriting the two symbols are interchangeable anyway, and that’s what I was thinking of: writing with a pen or pencil.

@Gąska said in The Raku Programming Language:

Over here they write ·.

TIL that in Sweden and Poland, people don’t use a diagonal cross as a multiplication sign.

It never stops amazing me how condescending people can be while being so ignorant of the thing they talk about.
[snip]
Computer keyboards have these symbols because typewriters had these symbols. Programming languages use these symbols because they were already available on keyboards, not the other way around.

Yes and no.

Typewriter keyboards have those symbols because space on them is limited and a decent, all-purpose set of characters was needed. This is true also of computer keyboards, but because they’re electrical rather than mechanical, it’s easier to put more stuff in much the same space, or in slightly more keyboard space without needing a lot more room behind the keyboard.

Anyway, what typewriter designers therefore did, was make characters multi-functional. I doubt many people typed * to mean multiplication on a typewriter, even though the symbol is on the keyboard. If × is the multiplication symbol, then you can also type an x instead, while if they used · then I suppose they’d have done something like turn the paper downward by half a line, typed a . and turned the paper back. Many typewriters had no 1 on it either, for example: people using such a machine would type a lowercase l for it instead. (Not sure if the one in your first pic is like that: it has no 1 next to the two, but the top row has keys for 1, 10, 100 and 1000, but I don’t know what they actually do.) Or, for that ma

True, computer keyboards evolved from typewriter keyboards, but they include a number of keys/symbols that were mainly of use to programmers ca. the 1960s. Are there | symbols on typewriter keyboards? What is the use of that symbol anyway, outside of programming?

[Gurth]

@dkf said in The Raku Programming Language:

4. Control (often ^, left side only) — It's a control key. It isn't used for many keyboard shortcuts (except in combination with Command or the arrow keys) and that leaves it free for doing all sorts of things in applications.

It also accesses GNU-style navigation keys in all Cocoa text fields (and the Terminal app). For example, Ctrl+L puts the current line in the vertical centre of a multi-line text box (or document window), Ctrl+A gets you to the start of the paragraph, etc. Most users don’t know about this, of course, but interestingly, Adobe’s home-brewed controls didn’t until CS3 or 4 or so, and then also began supporting these shortcuts.

[Rhywden]

@topspin said in The Raku Programming Language:

@Gąska said in The Raku Programming Language:

@dkf you're thinking of physicists. Mathematicians use subscripts a lot. And all kinds of diacritics and other overlays. It's still impossible to read, but in a different way.

The mathematicians I'm dealing with use x, x, X, 𝒳, and probably a few others all with different meaning. Of course they also combine with x̂, x̄, x̃, x̊, and all that stuff, so you're both right.

Edit: Well, those composed characters render like shit.

An escalation of that happened to me only once, luckily. A Theoretical Physicist (what other discipline would have this problem on a regular basis?) ran out of Greek and Latin characters during his lecture.

He then happily introduced the Aleph (which, of course, looked nothing like an actual Aleph!)

[Gąska]

@Gurth said in The Raku Programming Language:

@Gąska said in The Raku Programming Language:

Over here they write ·.

TIL that in Sweden and Poland, people don’t use a diagonal cross as a multiplication sign.

Fun fact: Polish language doesn't have "x" at all. It used to, though.

I doubt many people typed * to mean multiplication on a typewriter

Do you have any more evidence than your doubt? Otherwise we have an impasse, because...

while if they used · then I suppose they’d have done something like turn the paper downward by half a line, typed a . and turned the paper back.

...I doubt with at least as much strength that accountants would bother with paper manipulation every time they wanted to enter quantity.

True, computer keyboards evolved from typewriter keyboards, but they include a number of keys/symbols that were mainly of use to programmers ca. the 1960s. Are there | symbols on typewriter keyboards? What is the use of that symbol anyway, outside of programming?

Drawing tables before Word became a thing. Typewriters don't have that because tables were drawn with pens and rulers (I found a patent from 1935 for intergrating rulers into typewriters so the lines can be drawn while writing instead of after). Again, programming languages wouldn't use that symbol if it wasn't already available.

The only thing I can agree with is that the reason keyboards haven't changed is backward compatibility. Also, tradition, and people's natural tendency to avoid change. That's why no printable character was removed from keyboard for the last 50+ years. As for why no keys were added - beyond letters, numbers and basic punctuation, most people really don't need anything more; and GUIs have become advanced enough that adding a special symbol here and there with mouse only is no problem at all (ie. no incentive to put it on the keyboard).

[Benjamin Hall]

@Rhywden said in The Raku Programming Language:

@topspin said in The Raku Programming Language:

@Gąska said in The Raku Programming Language:

@dkf you're thinking of physicists. Mathematicians use subscripts a lot. And all kinds of diacritics and other overlays. It's still impossible to read, but in a different way.

The mathematicians I'm dealing with use x, x, X, 𝒳, and probably a few others all with different meaning. Of course they also combine with x̂, x̄, x̃, x̊, and all that stuff, so you're both right.

Edit: Well, those composed characters render like shit.

An escalation of that happened to me only once, luckily. A Theoretical Physicist (what other discipline would have this problem on a regular basis?) ran out of Greek and Latin characters during his lecture.

He then happily introduced the Aleph (which, of course, looked nothing like an actual Aleph!)

A friend of mine in grad school had run out of Greek and Latin characters while doing homework and needed some temporary variables to represent a set of big, long, non-simplifying integrals. So he used chinese characters. I used Cyrillic ones for that same purpose. Now I'd probably use or some other emoji.

[PleegWat]

@Gurth said in The Raku Programming Language:

In handwriting the two symbols are interchangeable anyway

The only handwriting I ever learned officially was cursive, and I'm certain the x I learned there is different from the (straight) × I learned to write when I first learned my sums.

[Gąska]

@Benjamin-Hall reminds me of the original names for Algorithm W and Algorithm J in Robin Milner's paper on type inference.

[topspin]

@Benjamin-Hall said in The Raku Programming Language:

@Rhywden said in The Raku Programming Language:

@topspin said in The Raku Programming Language:

@Gąska said in The Raku Programming Language:

@dkf you're thinking of physicists. Mathematicians use subscripts a lot. And all kinds of diacritics and other overlays. It's still impossible to read, but in a different way.

The mathematicians I'm dealing with use x, x, X, 𝒳, and probably a few others all with different meaning. Of course they also combine with x̂, x̄, x̃, x̊, and all that stuff, so you're both right.

Edit: Well, those composed characters render like shit.

An escalation of that happened to me only once, luckily. A Theoretical Physicist (what other discipline would have this problem on a regular basis?) ran out of Greek and Latin characters during his lecture.

He then happily introduced the Aleph (which, of course, looked nothing like an actual Aleph!)

A friend of mine in grad school had run out of Greek and Latin characters while doing homework and needed some temporary variables to represent a set of big, long, non-simplifying integrals. So he used chinese characters. I used Cyrillic ones for that same purpose. Now I'd probably use or some other emoji.

From my experience, I'd bet 5 bucks that at least one of {a, b, c, d, e, f, g, h} was still available, but they were too mundane to even think about it.
Reminds me of algebra 101 when the prof talked about some stuff with permutations and matrices or whatever, and since he had already used i and j (and M and σ) he used ζ and ξ as the next best alternative to (i, j). Which, when written dozens of times in small indices handwritten on a blackboard was absolutely FUN to decipher. Because god forbid you use some characters that don't look like different variants of the character "squiggle". You know, the same one that people use when they can't be bothered to write {, }, or 𝄽 ( ).

[Benjamin Hall]

@topspin said in The Raku Programming Language:

From my experience, I'd bet 5 bucks that at least one of {a, b, c, d, e, f, g, h} was still available, but they were too mundane to even think about it.

This was (IIRC) Electrodynamics, so c, d, e, h all had direct other meanings (several of which might have been in the equation at hand. But more importantly, they were all too common for things like limits, input parameters from the problem, etc. So we needed things that were just different.

And apropos of ξ, we always called that one "squiggly": "the equation is 3 times squiggly, plus squiggly squared, minus ....

[topspin]

@Benjamin-Hall yeah, but then is the other one (zeta) "other squiggly", "less(er) squiggly", or what?

[Benjamin Hall]

@topspin said in The Raku Programming Language:

@Benjamin-Hall yeah, but then is the other one (zeta) "other squiggly", "less(er) squiggly", or what?

Not sure we (or me, personally) used zeta that much. But it's been almost 12 years since then, so...

[dfdub]

@topspin
Zeta and xi are extra fun to tell apart when your professor changes his handwritten version of them five times throughout a two-hour lecture. One of my maths professors loved to do that and refused to offer any written materials for his course, so you had a lot of fun trying to decipher whatever he wrote on the blackboard.

[pie_flavor]

I hear mention of superscripts and subscripts.

$x = 4²;
say $x ~~ 16;
$y = 2³²;
say $y ~~ 4294967296;

[pie_flavor]

@pie_flavor Bonus numerics:

$x = ½;
say $x ~~ 0.5;
$x = ７３;
say $x ~~ 73;

[TwelveBaud]

@pie_flavor I see precomposed fraction support, is there also support for Unicode's "fractional slash" and decomposed fractions?

[Gąska]

@pie_flavor said in The Raku Programming Language:

I hear mention of superscripts and subscripts.

$x = 4²;
say $x ~~ 16;
$y = 2³²;
say $y ~~ 4294967296;

Kill me please.

[pie_flavor]

@TwelveBaud said in The Raku Programming Language:

@pie_flavor I see precomposed fraction support, is there also support for Unicode's "fractional slash" and decomposed fractions?

Unfortunately no. But it is not hard to create:

sub infix:<⁄>(Int:D $lhs, Int:D $rhs --> Rat:D) {
    return Rat.new: $lhs, $rhs;
}
$x = 2⁄3;
say $x ~~ ⅔

The docs actually explicitly say, in another part:

If your program requires a significant amount of FatRat creation, you could create your own custom operator:

sub infix:<🙼> { FatRat.new: $^a, $^b }

say (1🙼3).raku; # OUTPUT: «FatRat.new(1, 3)␤» 

[Watson]

@topspin said in The Raku Programming Language:

@Gąska said in The Raku Programming Language:

@dkf you're thinking of physicists. Mathematicians use subscripts a lot. And all kinds of diacritics and other overlays. It's still impossible to read, but in a different way.

The mathematicians I'm dealing with use x, x, X, 𝒳, and probably a few others all with different meaning. Of course they also combine with x̂, x̄, x̃, x̊, and all that stuff, so you're both right.

This book on quantum field theory I'm reading

• A footnote on page 24 reads "For the time being, we will drop the 'hats' on x ̂_j and p ̂_j to save cluttering the algebra." [Note that this is when x_j and p_j are already being used.]
• Page 25 also has a footnote. "For clarity, we will now omit the tilde from x ̃_k and p ̃_k, but to remind ourselves that they are operators we will reinstate the 'hats', so that they become x ̂_k and p ̂_k."

I'm starting to remember why I dropped physics.

[Benjamin Hall]

@Watson and then you get into general relativity and/or field theory and sub and super scripts start multiplying like weeds. And are a mix of Greek and Latin, and those (plus positions) have meanings. It's headache inducing.

[Gurth]

@Gąska said in The Raku Programming Language:

Fun fact: Polish language doesn't have "x" at all. It used to, though.

Dutch also only really has it in loanwords or Latin-derived ones, like “ex-”.

<x> is a completely superfluous letter anyway — it doesn’t do anything that <ks> wouldn’t as well, except require fewer (key)strokes. (There are languages that have co-opted it for other sounds than /ks/, of course, but I’m talking about its pronunciation in most European languages.)

I doubt many people typed * to mean multiplication on a typewriter

Do you have any more evidence than your doubt? Otherwise we have an impasse, because...

Not really, as I find it very hard to research this :( I did come across this, though:

Why does the symbol for the multiplication operation change shape?

Why does the "

https://math.stackexchange.com/questions/1844374/why-does-the-symbol-for-the-multiplication-operation-change-shape

#x5C;times

https://math.stackexchange.com/questions/1844374/why-does-the-symbol-for-the-multiplication-operation-change-shape

quot; used in arithmetic change to a "

https://math.stackexchange.com/questions/1844374/why-does-the-symbol-for-the-multiplication-operation-change-shape

#x5C;cdot

https://math.stackexchange.com/questions/1844374/why-does-the-symbol-for-the-multiplication-operation-change-shape

quot; as we progress through education? The symbol seems to only be ambiguous because of the variable $x$; however, we wouldn't have chose...

(nice onebox, BTW …)

Also:

Typewriter Typefaces - The Typewriter Database

Browsing through the samples there, a lot don’t have an asterisk at all. A non-thorough look gives me the impression that asterisks were fairly common on American typewriters (except Underwoods) but not on (continental) European ones.

while if they used · then I suppose they’d have done something like turn the paper downward by half a line, typed a . and turned the paper back.

...I doubt with at least as much strength that accountants would bother with paper manipulation every time they wanted to enter quantity.

Accountants would generally type stuff in columns, wouldn’t they? So they’d just set tab stops on the carriage and hit the Tab key.

[Gurth]

@PleegWat said in The Raku Programming Language:

@Gurth said in The Raku Programming Language:

In handwriting the two symbols are interchangeable anyway

The only handwriting I ever learned officially was cursive, and I'm certain the x I learned there is different from the (straight) × I learned to write when I first learned my sums.

I first learned to write in separate, upright letters. We were only taught connected cursive letters one or two years after that.

[pie_flavor]

@Gurth said in The Raku Programming Language:

most European languages.

Such as English? e.g. 'ex̲amine' makes a 'gs' noise, 'x̲ylophone' makes a 'z' noise, etc.

[PleegWat]

@Gurth said in The Raku Programming Language:

@PleegWat said in The Raku Programming Language:

@Gurth said in The Raku Programming Language:

In handwriting the two symbols are interchangeable anyway

The only handwriting I ever learned officially was cursive, and I'm certain the x I learned there is different from the (straight) × I learned to write when I first learned my sums.

I first learned to write in separate, upright letters. We were only taught connected cursive letters one or two years after that.

Now that you mention it, there was that phase. We were certainly expected to use cursive by the time multiplication cam around though.

[Kamil Podlesak]

@pie_flavor said in The Raku Programming Language:

@Gurth said in The Raku Programming Language:

most European languages.

Such as English? e.g. 'ex̲amine' makes a 'gs' noise, 'x̲ylophone' makes a 'z' noise, etc.

In this context, "most European languages" usually means "European languages except English, Greek and the Cyrillic-using ones". Especially considering English orthography, which is legendary (all other languages in Europe at least try to use regular orthography, to some degree).

I think that might be actually by design. It shows that England is not actually in Europe

[Steve_The_Cynic]

@pie_flavor said in The Raku Programming Language:

@Gurth said in The Raku Programming Language:

most European languages.

Such as English? e.g. 'ex̲amine' makes a 'gs' noise, 'x̲ylophone' makes a 'z' noise, etc.

I pronounce "examine" as if it's spelled "egzamin", and so does everyone I've ever heard say it.

Everyone seems to think that English pronunciation has no rules, but in fact, it does. It has lots of rules, and which ones you apply depend on the etymology (and who knows, in some cases perhaps the entomology as well) of the word. The effect is the same, since two words with vaguely similar appearance in modern English(1) may have radically different origins.

(1) For maximum amusement, if you're amused by that sort of thing, which I am, try reading some of the texts in the "Middle English Texts Series" published by the Western Michigan University Press (at Kalamazoo). Despite the name and geographic location, it's deadly serious stuff, and pretty respected in the academic world of mediaeval literature. Try ISBN 1-58044-017-7 "Four Romances Of England", comprising the texts of King Horn, Havelok the Dane, Bevis of Hampton, and Athelston. The texts are in actual 13th Century Middle English, with the writing corrected only for the absence in Modern English typesetting of the Middle English letters "eth", "thorn", and "wynn". It takes some getting used to, especially since only about half the words are familiar, and even then not completely familiar, while the rest are interpretable only with the help of the notes around the text.

One thing it did reveal is that the phrase, "Hang 'em high," which I associated with Westerns and the like, is actually very old. At one point, Havelok is forced to marry the old (dead) king's daughter under duress, and the text conntains the promise from the antagonist that, in modern terminology and spelling, "I will hang you high," if Havelok refuses. Bear in mind that the manuscript for the text in the book was written in about 1280, based on a story that was much older, so the phrase itself is of uncertain but ancient origin.

[Gąska]

@Steve_The_Cynic said in The Raku Programming Language:

@pie_flavor said in The Raku Programming Language:

@Gurth said in The Raku Programming Language:

most European languages.

Such as English? e.g. 'ex̲amine' makes a 'gs' noise, 'x̲ylophone' makes a 'z' noise, etc.

I pronounce "examine" as if it's spelled "egzamin", and so does everyone I've ever heard say it.

Fun fact: "egzamin" is an actual Polish word (pronounced the same, too) that means a qualification test/exam.

[topspin]

@Gąska said in The Raku Programming Language:

@pie_flavor said in The Raku Programming Language:

I hear mention of superscripts and subscripts.

$x = 4²;
say $x ~~ 16;
$y = 2³²;
say $y ~~ 4294967296;

Kill me please.

This is what people in this thread actually believeargue for.

[Gąska]

@topspin kill them too while we're at it.

[Gurth]

@pie_flavor said in The Raku Programming Language:

@Gurth said in The Raku Programming Language:

most European languages.

Such as English? e.g. 'ex̲amine' makes a 'gs' noise, 'x̲ylophone' makes a 'z' noise, etc.

The sound for <x> in both of those is not the letter being co-opted for a different sound than /ks/ but pronunciation shift. <x> is the Latin equivalent of Greek <ξ> which is pronounced [ksi], but in English, pronunciation of these and similar letters has often shifted quite dramatically. But even in Greek, I think ξ does nothing that they couldn’t also have written as “κσ” (“ks”).

[Gurth]

@Steve_The_Cynic said in The Raku Programming Language:

Everyone seems to think that English pronunciation has no rules, but in fact, it does. It has lots of rules, and which ones you apply depend on the etymology (and who knows, in some cases perhaps the entomology as well) of the word. The effect is the same, since two words with vaguely similar appearance in modern English(1) may have radically different origins.

When Dutch spelling began to be standardised in the middle of the 19th century, the spelling of many words was based on etymology. This lead to a lot of confusion because two apparently very similar words would end up being spelled differently enough to catch people out, because, say, one was of Germanic origin and the other derived from Latin. Those rules were simplified fairly early on because, essentially, schoolteachers complained that “you can’t teach this.”

That’s not to say Dutch doesn’t still have etymological reasons for spelling differences, though — the pairs au–ou and ei–ij, for example, in which both digraphs are pronounced identically but the words they make are entirely different: ijs means “ice‘, eis is “demand,” for example.

[topspin]

@Gurth said in The Raku Programming Language:

schoolteachers complained that “you can’t teach this.”

And we're right back on the topic of C++ Raku.

[Gąska]

@Gurth Polish was standardized several times, the latest was Soviet effort in late 1940s-early 50s to make everything uniform and doubleplus good, building upon the work in the interwar period. Because it's both recent and centrally planned, we have almost 1:1 mapping between spelling and pronunciation, and all words are extremely regular and exactly what you'd expect from just hearing them, barring a few exceptions. The problem of not knowing how to write or pronounce words you've just learned basically doesn't exist. It even applies to names and surnames.

[Applied Mediocrity]

@Gąska Tell me again how to pronounce that L, which is not really L. Or five ways to pronounce ą and ę. It's probably consistent, but it's certainly not 1:1.

Język łotewski, on the other hand... is perfect 1:1.

Goddammit, you've stuffed that crazy ł even there! I'm offended.

[pie_flavor]

@Gąska Spanish is the same, and didn't require communism. But you do you.