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Why Haven't Special Character Sets Caught On?
theodp asks: "Almost forty years after Kenneth Iverson's APL\360 employed neat Selectric hacks to implement Special Character Sets to express operators with a single symbol, we're still using clunky notation like '<>', '^=', or 'NE' to represent inequality and cryptic escape sequences like '\n' to denote a new line, even though the Mac brought GUI's to the masses more than twenty years ago. Why?"
It's not the compiler programmers have to worry about.
Sure, a compiler could in essense sort out a file written in a dozen different programming languages, but imagine a team of developers all with different programming backgrounds trying to figure out what each coded? Software design would cease to work.
Software language is like spoken language in general, we all need a set of syntax and grammar rules so we can simply understand each other and effectively communicate. If you write a book using a random assortment of languages, is anybody going to read it? Talk to someone in 4 different languages and are you going to have an understandable conversation.
Also, in reality, a compiler CAN'T actually be designed to parse and compile a file written in a variety of languages. Symbols and characters mean differnt things in different languages. How do you know when a code statement is complete? C uses the ; character, other languages rely on a linefeed or some other delimiting character. Some languages impose restrictions on how you place tabs in code even. How is a compiler going to know your intending a line to be written in Java while the next is in Pascal, then the next in C. How will a Java object be referenced by a C pointer or a FORTRAN formula or interact with other languages in the same program. Compilers need a rigid set of rules in order to parse code properly, and the syntax is important in order to ensure there are no errors while writing code or generating the machine language.
There are really no specialized languages these days. Fortran may have been used for math/science based projects, COBOL for business, but most people could easily link a library of C functions that offer enhanced math capabilities even though C wasn't specialized for math. A good generalized language allows you to write the specialized code using it without limitations.
Finally, I don't want to have to learn a dozen different languages to get the job done. I speciallize in C++ because I find it an effective way to develop the applications I am commissioned to write. While I can easily adapt to other languages or scripts for specific purposes, I don't want to have to learn FORTRAN simply to write some math formulas into my app. And I would shudder the day LISP makes a comeback in any way shape or form. Learning one language is easier then a dozen, and keeping specialized means your more effective and adept in using that one language. Its the old "Jack of all trades, master of none" addage, specialize or get left behind.
Lastely, we could use single characters to represent those "klunky" two character symbols. But why? What is the beef with writing != for inequality. Would using single characters make the language easier to write or understand? Your assuming that all people can easily recognize a single character symbol as meaningful. Looking at the APL programming language, I couldn't understand half the characters and I have been programming for 12 years. Again, as someone mentioned, if your a software developer != and such are easily understandable and I don't think we need to rewrite software tools and keyboards to make a few people happy, yes, even if Apple released a GUI OS so many years ago (what that has to do with anything, I don't know)
I haven't thought of anything clever to put here, but then again most of you haven't either.
No, you're not my son, you're just another young moron who thinks links reflect knowledge. Of course, if you read your links you'll see that COBOL was driven by FLOW-MATIC; Java wasn't designed by a committee, but the version of C you've most certainly used was; and that LISP, FORTRAN, and COBOL are in fact exactly contemporary.
If you had much deep knowledge of programming languages --- or had read the links you posted --- you'd also realize that Java has more in common with Smalltalk than pretty much any other conventional language in any way except syntax.
What you probably don't know is that I stopped sleeping with your mother when I realized she'd have children that were ugly and dress funny.