What Might Adding Emojis and Pictures To Text Programming Languages Look Like?
- Reference: 0180448287
- News link: https://developers.slashdot.org/story/25/12/24/0323250/what-might-adding-emojis-and-pictures-to-text-programming-languages-look-like
- Source link:
> We all mix pictures, emojis, and text freely in our communications. So why not in our code? That's the premise of " [2]Fun With Python and Emoji: What Might Adding Pictures to Text Programming Languages Look Like? " (two-image Bluesky explainer; [3]full slides ), which takes a look at what mixing emoji with Python and SQL might look like. A [4]GitHub repo includes a [5]Google Colab-ready Python notebook proof of concept that does rudimentary emoji-to-text translation via an IPython input transformer.
>
> So, in the [6]Golden Age of AI -- some 60+ years after Kenneth Iverson introduced the chock-full-of-symbols [7]APL -- are valid technical reasons still keeping symbols and pictures out of code, or is their absence more of a [8]programming dogma thing?
[1] https://slashdot.org/~theodp
[2] https://bsky.app/profile/vivasasvegas.bsky.social/post/3mafepkvrvk2b
[3] https://drive.google.com/file/d/1zfRhAaU9ypgxgcr08RwAbU22G5zgq6p4/view?usp=sharing
[4] https://github.com/tedconway/pydataboston2025
[5] https://github.com/tedconway/pydataboston2025/blob/main/demo4pydata2025.ipynb
[6] https://developers.slashdot.org/story/25/12/23/010200/microsoft-to-replace-all-cc-code-with-rust-by-2030
[7] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/APL_(programming_language)
[8] https://developers.slashdot.org/story/13/08/09/1641249/back-to-the-future-of-programming
We all mix pics emojis in our communications .. (Score:5, Informative)
We all mix pictures, emojis, and text freely in our communications ..
No we don't, unless we don't want to be taken seriously.
Re: (Score:1)
With the way things are going, we don't need to worry about 'pictures for retards' being added to text - we need to worry about them replacing text.
No. Just no. (Score:2)
This would be a great post for April 1st... smh
When will it be added to the Linux kernel? (Score:1)
If Rust can be added, than anything can be added.
Emoji won't be as much of a security risk as Rust.
I'd switch languages immediately... (Score:2)
...if I could find one that would support :facepalm: emojis in comments.
April 1st falls early this year (Score:2)
Maybe those python guys can fix that spaces schema?
Re: (Score:3)
You might be onto something; replace the spaces with emojis.
Sidewalk chalk art (Score:2)
by 6 year olds.
Cute but not very pretty.
Already happening (Score:2)
Swift allows emojis as valid var, const and func names. And a few weeks ago there was a Slashdot (I think) story about AI "written" code that had been pasted in to a programme. The return codes were emojis - sad face for error etc.
APL? (Score:2)
Anyone have an APL keyboard lying around?
I thought MindF..k was daft ... (Score:2)
... but emojis in Python is a whole new level of utter stupidity.
hold on there (Score:4, Insightful)
> We all mix pictures, emojis, and text freely in our communications.
No, we don't. Some of us still know that the purpose of communication is to convey information, not force the other party into a guessing game.
Re: (Score:2)
Communication over text IS partially a guessing game. Emojis can be used to convey emotional information. Text is subpar for communicating emotions, and is a very limited medium compared to face-to-face (where you can have facial expression data in addition to words) or even voice (where you have tone). So, don't be quick to diss emojis because they can assist filling that gap of those additional backchannels. Now of course you can misuse/overuse them as well, but that up to the user.
Now, code should not
Re: (Score:2)
Back before there were Japanese style emoji, we made little faces out of ASCII characters. They conveyed a lot of information, such as the tone in which something was being said.
As for programming, syntax highlighting greatly improves readability, so I'm not ruling out that certain emoji might too.
NO (Score:2)
No, NO, no, and NOOO.
What level of stupid, pointless, and literally useless idiocy is this?
42 :) 69 = 420
Can we just ... not? I know pols always need to "do something." Dev managers...also yes. But can the people writing the fking compilers just...NOT?
Ok, plan B. If you're making a language that accepts emojis, it must ONLY accept emojis and classis operands. No text. Have kind kiddies. Let me know when you manage 'hello world' while the rest of us do something - anything - vaguely more useful.
Re: (Score:2)
I get the stupid stuff and posted a funny example... but.. Emojis are just Unicode code points. If you're going to allow Unicode, should you arbitrarily disallow certain ranges/glyphs because they're in a list of those assigned to emojis? What if more are added... should the compiler download lists? Or should code always have to be the Latin alphabet and symbols on keyboard? I'd say allowing Unicode is fine and it's up to developers not to be jackasses with it.
Like this (Score:2)
Behold the horror!
[1]https://i.imgur.com/D0Uonre.jp... [imgur.com]
Thanks to the Monaco editor (also used by VSCode) and twinBASIC, a language in development backwards compatible with VB6... that can also be used to write kernel mode drivers... I'll add some to my next driver project, see how many aneurysms I can cause with emoji-filled BASIC running in km. Abomination!
[1] https://i.imgur.com/D0Uonre.jpeg
Wordstyle editor? (Score:2)
I occasionally write a math sheet in wxMaxima. I was thrilled that I could add titles and images. I do miss this in programming languages. It makes the document much more readable.
Add headings like in word. I do this in ASCII art to easily navigate around, but just a big fat title would be great.
Add a copy of the flow chart drawing in the spec to your program.
I used to do hardware design in the past. A timing diagram would make the code much more readable.
Too bad vim will not support that.
It's been done (Score:1)
And it worked out well for Perl 6.
What? (Score:2)
I think my IQ is in jeopardy just from reading the summary.
Keyboard support (Score:2)
That is why we stick to ASCII. Doing a lot numeric stuff, Greek letters would be nice. I have copies some Python code with actual lambda in it, but that is the point: I have to copy it, I cant type it unless I use a fancy editor supporting it, and it would still be a lot slower than typing "lambda".
Re: (Score:2)
Julia already supports arbitrary Unicode, but the programmers there are more serious and use it for serious stuff like λ ≡ μ and a Ã-- b . The standard VScode Julia package supports it, and it's great for readability.
Re: (Score:2)
Oof I forgot that Slashdot is stuck in the second millennium ASCII era.
What would you use them for? (Score:2)
Before suggesting them, I'd say list out the use cases for them. I've seen some suggestions, but none of them require adding anything to the programming languages themselves because they're about documentation which can (and should) be done separately from the programming language itself. Diagrams in documentation comments, for instance, merely requires Unicode in the comments and every language I know of supports that.
As a counter-argument, I'd suggest looking at APL. It did just this, using a myriad of sy
Accessibility (Score:2)
I have no idea whether this is a real proposal or just a very early April Fool's but taking it at face value - accessibility concerns and device compatibility are just a couple of immediate issues I can think of
debug this! (Score:1)
try :(
confused face emoji
catch
poop emoji
that is what jumping the shark of coding will look like.
Back to APL... (Score:2)
Back to APL with emojis, emoticons, and pictures; the Kenneth E. Iverson language that used symbols to write code.
[1]https://computerhistory.org/bl... [computerhistory.org]
--JoshK.
[1] https://computerhistory.org/blog/the-apl-programming-language-source-code/
why??? (Score:2)
nothing more to say except i'm dumber for having read the summary