Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by pron 2988 days ago
> Trying to make it easier to type, a bigger usability problem is created, assigning counterintuitive symbols to functionality that most people would not associate to them.

How do you know? It seems no such problem has been reported, so the burden is on you to show it exists. I don't think people assume that the same token has the same meaning in different languages.

1 comments

It seems no such problem has been reported

Oh, please. This has been a flamewar since the 80's. Every angle you can think of has been tried before. The real question is why are we still using plain text. A lot of the difference between languages is this kind of absurd minutiae taken too seriously as if we're discussing about the reality fabric instead of mere conventions.

A flamewar is a disagreement of opinion. I am not aware of any actual problem reported as a result of using the `=` sign for things other than equality or anything suggesting it is generally counterintuitive.
If I were you, I would start searching articles about a more interesting question: can everybody learn to program?

When you're teaching children, this is one of the most common complaints.