ra’s avatarra’s Twitter Archive—№ 48,111

                1. …in reply to @ManishEarth
                  @ManishEarth @BatmanAoD 👋🏽 > When faced with Arabic, terminals and text editors either crash or have no idea what to do was true in 2013 and is true now (screenshot attached, kitty garbles arabic text). text editors have improved a little, but they were a catastrophe in 2013, hence "no idea what to do"
                  oh my god twitter doesn’t include alt text from images in their API
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              1. …in reply to @ra
                @ManishEarth @BatmanAoD in general computers* do not render arabic correctly by default the way they render latin text correctly by default. this is documented at notarabic.com/ * what this really means is that attention is given to latin text rendering that is not given to other scripts
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            1. …in reply to @ra
              @ManishEarth @BatmanAoD > ...seeing as how pretty much all of the web's programming architecture is based in English words. being able to make non-latin identifiers does not solve the core problem. the built in keywords to javascript are and will always be english words. more importantly...
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          1. …in reply to @ra
            @ManishEarth @BatmanAoD ...the APIs and protocols that make up the programming architecture beyond JS as a language are all based on english words. HTTP headers are and will always be english words. the requestAnimationFrame JavaScript function is made of three english words.
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        1. …in reply to @ra
          @ManishEarth @BatmanAoD i can make arabic identifiers until i am blue in the face and it does not change my original assertion: the programming technologies of the web (and really all programming technologies) and fundamentally based on english words.
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      1. …in reply to @ra
        @ManishEarth @BatmanAoD > How can these students reason in these languages? Are they reading the letters and or are they manipulating abstract symbols? programming is abstract, sure, but it is inconceivable to me that proficiency with english is not a categorical advantage when reading and writing code
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    1. …in reply to @ra
      @ManishEarth @BatmanAoD you seem to imply that programming similarly boils down to the abstract manipulation of symbols *for everyone*. i have to reject that. if that were the case there wouldnt be a million lengthy blog posts and talks about choosing good -- English! -- function and endpoint names.
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  1. …in reply to @ra
    @ManishEarth @BatmanAoD 2013's قلب was the start of a long research project into the cultural assumptions baked into computing. i stand by everything i said then, and i elaborate on it in this 2018 essay ojs.decolonising.digital/index.php/decolonising_digital/article/view/PersonalComputer and this 2019 talk deconstructconf.com/2019/ramsey-nasser-a-personal-computer-for-children-of-all-cultures in case those are interesting ✌️🏽
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