<html><head><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html charset=utf-8"></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space;" class=""><br class=""><div><blockquote type="cite" class=""><div class="">On Aug 29, 2017, at 4:57 AM, John Pratt via swift-evolution <<a href="mailto:swift-evolution@swift.org" class="">swift-evolution@swift.org</a>> wrote:</div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"><div class=""><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html charset=utf-8" class=""><div style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space;" class="">I sent a postal envelope to the Swift team with an article I wrote, arguing that<div class="">symbols and graphics would push the programming language forward.</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">Wouldn’t it be nice to have an actual multiplication matrix broken out into code,</div><div class="">instead of typing, “matrix()”? It seems to me Swift has the chance to do that.</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">Also: why does "<==" still reside in code as "less than or equal to” when</div><div class="">there is a unicode equivalent that looks neat? </div></div></div></blockquote><div><br class=""></div><div>Hi John,</div><div><br class=""></div><div>while it may be visually appealing, can you imagine typing those in real-life programming? I can't. Reaching for Symbol Viewer each time I need to compare two ints is a bit impractical, don't you think? Yes, on some keyboard layouts (e.g. US), you can use Option-< to type ≤, but in general, this one keyboard layout out of many and also the other symbols suggested (union, etc.) are nowhere to be found on a keyboard.</div><div><br class=""></div><div>If you desire them, you can define custom operators, but it's IMHO impractical. It would require a radical redesign of the keyboard - and if you suggest the TouchBar, can you imagine symbols from your Fig. 6 on there and having to browse through them looking for the one you want?</div><div><br class=""></div><div>If you want to test using them, you can try this library that defines them: <a href="https://github.com/mattt/Euler" class="">https://github.com/mattt/Euler</a></div><div><br class=""></div><br class=""><blockquote type="cite" class=""><div style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space;" class=""><div class="">Why can’t the square of x have a superscript of 2 instead of having “pow(x,2)? </div><div class="">I think this would make programming much easier to deal with.</div></div></blockquote><div><br class=""></div><div>Sorry, but I personally think it would make programming slower. Person, who can type with all 10 of his fingers will outpace a person looking for math symbols on a TouchBar any time he need to use "greater than or equal"...</div><br class=""><blockquote type="cite" class=""><div class=""><div style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space;" class=""><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">I expound on this issue in my article:</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class=""><a href="http://www.noctivagous.com/nct_graphics_symbols_prglngs_draft2-3-12.pdf" class="">http://www.noctivagous.com/nct_graphics_symbols_prglngs_draft2-3-12.pdf</a></div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">Thank you for reading.</div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">-John</div></div>_______________________________________________<br class="">swift-evolution mailing list<br class=""><a href="mailto:swift-evolution@swift.org" class="">swift-evolution@swift.org</a><br class="">https://lists.swift.org/mailman/listinfo/swift-evolution<br class=""></div></blockquote></div><br class=""></body></html>