Unicode in the Curriculum?

[Shawn Steele]

Then it should be UTF-8.  Learning to do something in a non-Unicode code page and then redoing it for UTF-8 or UTF-16 merely leads to conversion problems, incompatibilities, and other nonsense.

If someone “needs” to not use UTF-16 for whatever reason, then they should use UTF-8.  The “advanced” training should be the other non-Unicode code pages.

Teach them right the first time.  They’ll never use a code page.

-Shawn

From: Unicode [mailto:unicode-bounces at unicode.org] On Behalf Of Asmus Freytag (t)
Sent: January 6, 2016 3:19 PM
To: unicode at unicode.org
Subject: Re: Unicode in the Curriculum?

On 1/6/2016 10:59 AM, Shawn Steele wrote:

+1  :)

I'm not going to join the happy chorus here.

The "bunny" slope for most people is their own native language...

A./






-----Original Message-----

From: Unicode [mailto:unicode-bounces at unicode.org] On Behalf Of Ken Whistler

Sent: Wednesday, January 6, 2016 7:44 AM

To: Andre Schappo <A.Schappo at lboro.ac.uk><mailto:A.Schappo at lboro.ac.uk>

Cc: unicode at unicode.org<mailto:unicode at unicode.org>

Subject: Re: Unicode in the Curriculum?



Actually, ASCII should *not* be ignored or deprecated.



We *love* ASCII. The issue is just making sure that students understand that the *true name* of "ASCII" is "UTF-8". It is just the very first 128 values that open into the entire world of Unicode characters.



It is a mind trick to play on young programmers: when you learn "ASCII", you are just playing on the bunny slope at the UTF-8 ski resort. Slap on your snowboard and practice -- get out there onto the 2-, 3- and 4-byte slopes with the experts!



--Ken



On 1/6/2016 4:09 AM, Andre Schappo wrote:

On 4 Jan 2016, at 16:59, Asmus Freytag (t) wrote:



ASCII shouldn't be taught, perhaps?

I really like the idea of questioning whether or not ASCII should even be taught.



Wherever in a programming curriculum, text processing/transmission/storage/presentation/encoding is taught, then it should be Unicode text.



ASCII, along with, ISO-8859 ISO-2022 GB2312  .etc. should be consigned

to



.and finally, the legacy character sets/encodings...



Maybe ASCII should now be flagged as deprecated

https://twitter.com/andreschappo/status/684706421712228352



André Schappo















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