Problems of Symbol Congestion in Computer Languages

[rantingrick]

On Feb 16, 4:07 pm, Xah Lee <xah... at gmail.com> wrote:
> Vast majority of computer languages use ASCII as its character set.
> This means, it jams multitude of operators into about 20 symbols.
> Often, a symbol has multiple meanings depending on contex.

I think in theory the idea of using Unicode chars is good, however in
reality the implementation would be a nightmare!  A wise man once
said: "The road to hell is paved in good intentions". ;-)

If we consider all the boundaries that exist between current
(programming) languages (syntax, IDE's, paradigms, etc) then we will
realize that adding *more* symbols does not help, no, it actually
hinders! And Since Unicode is just a hodgepodge encoding of many
regional (natural) languages --of which we have too many already in
this world!-- proliferating Unicode symbols in source code only serves
to further complicate our lives with even *more* multiplicity!

Those of us on the *inside* know that Unicode is nothing more than an
poor attempt to monkey patch multiplicity. And that statement barely
scratches the surface of an underlying disease that plagues all of
human civilization. The root case is selfishness, which *then*
propagates up and manifests itself as multiplicity in our everyday
lives. It starts as the simple selfish notion of "me" against "other"
and then extrapolates exponentially into the collective of "we"
against "others".

This type of grouping --or selfish typecasting if you will-- is
impeding the furtherer evolution of homo sapiens. Actually we are
moving at a snails pace when we could be moving at the speed of light!
We *should* be evolving as a genetic algorithm but instead we are the
ignorant slaves of our own collective selfishness reduced to naive and
completely random implementations of bozosort!

Now don't misunderstand all of this as meaning "multiplicity is bad",
because i am not suggesting any such thing! On the contrary,
multiplicity is VERY important in emerging problem domains. Before
such a domain is understood by the collective unconscience we need
options (multiplicity!) from which to choose from. However, once a
"collective understanding" is reached we must reign in the
multiplicity or it will become yet another millstone around our
evolutionary necks, slowing our evolution.

But multiplicity is just the very beginning of a downward spiral of
devolution. Once you allow multiplicity to become the sport of
Entropy, it may be too late for recovery! Entropy leads to shock
(logical disorder) which then leads to stagnation (no logical order at
all!). At this point we loose all forward momentum in our evolution.
And why? Because of nothing more than self gratifying SELFISHNESS.

Anyone with half a brain understands the metric system is far superior
(on many levels) then any of the other units of measurement. However
again we have failed to reign in the multiplicity and so entropy has
run a muck, and we are like a deer "caught-in-the-headlights" of the
shock of our self induced devolution and simultaneously entirely
incapable of seeing the speeding mass that is about to plow over us
with a tremendous kinetic energy -- evolutionary stagnation!

Sadly this disease of selfishness infects many aspects of the human
species to the very detriment of our collective evolution. Maybe one
day we will see the light of logic and choose to unite in a collective
evolution. Even after thousands of years we are but infants on the
evolutionary scale because we continue to feed the primal urges of
selfishness.