TIL about the greek question mark

Tell me, can you tell the difference between these two characters?

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  • qaz
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    1211 year ago

    Every syntax highligher shows this and VSCode even has a special case for this, this is not a real issue.

    • Kalash
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      581 year ago

      I just tried and it just turns into a proper semicolon and everything works. (Sublime Text).

      That might explain that:

      In Unicode, it is separately encoded as U+037E ; GREEK QUESTION MARK, but the similarity is so great that the code point is normalised to U+003B ; SEMICOLON, making the marks identical in practice.

  • @[email protected]
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    1141 year ago

    Like r/programmerhumor, this community is already full of people who literally never programmed anything more than Hello World before.

    • @[email protected]
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      621 year ago

      And just like Reddit you’re complaining about it for absolutely no reason. How about we try to be a bit more welcoming and a bit less gatekeepery.

      • @[email protected]
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        81 year ago

        That’s kind of an absurd position when the explicit purpose of segmented communities is to gatekeep content.

      • @[email protected]
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        11 year ago

        I realize my attitude is negative, but r/programmerhumor was not my crowd and it looks like neither is this community. There is no place where I can find memes about a large part of my life and I’m frustrated.

        “Missing semicolon”, “light IDE is for psychopaths”, “JS sucks”, “AI is just if-statements”, I just can’t relate to those jokes and after the 100th repost I still don’t think they’re funny.

    • exu
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      121 year ago

      Did you expect anything different?

    • @[email protected]
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      1 year ago

      programming hello world is doing better than most people and I applaud and welcome beginners.

      I am little more than an amateur myself, entirely self taught, and yet I’m forever digging into various bits of code for my marketing job, because paying someone $400 to fix a recalcitrant css style in a week and a half is worse than just doing it myself.

    • @[email protected]
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      21 year ago

      Who the hell tries putting Greek question marks in their code? Like, I get most compilers will show you what character each error starts at, but still.

  • @[email protected]
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    981 year ago

    I get this warning in my IDE (VS Code) so I feel safe:

    The character U+037e “;” could be confused with the ASCII character U+003b “;”, which is more common in source code.

  • EtzBetz
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    511 year ago

    Laughs in just removing all semicolons because it’s not necessary in JS.

    • Andrew
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      51 year ago

      It is recommended. But in TS it is not necessary with rare exceptions.

      • Platypus
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        1 year ago

        That’s what’s really irks me be about JS–you can do just about whatever but you’re not supposed to.

        It’s an imperative language, but best practices are to use it functionally.

        You can omit semicolons, but best practices are to use them.

        You can use sloppy equality, but best practices are to always use strict.

        • @[email protected]
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          181 year ago

          JavaScript reminds me of an older brother who happens to be the most laid back stoner you could meet. “Like yea man, you should probably use semicolons, but I ain’t gonna narc”

        • @[email protected]
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          91 year ago

          After switching to typescript with linting and prettier I simply hate writing vanilla JavaScript anymore. Some people complain about the extra project setup needed but I find that time pays for itself immediately.

          • Andrew
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            01 year ago

            Extra project setup like pnpm add -D typescript && tsc --init? One thing that is kinda annoying is that you have to manage were will js files go.

        • @[email protected]
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          81 year ago

          You need to remember that a lot of those best practices are to cover for the performance issues from misusing loosely typed variables.

          The JavaScript engine can compile clean, type-safe code down to be almost as fast as properly compiled code. When you use various features like the loose equals or various object mutations and the like, the engine cannot optimize it, leaving your code much, much slower.

            • @[email protected]
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              41 year ago

              Yup! I love TypeScript, and I love the flexibility of JavaScript. With all of the type templates and generics and other black magic TypeScript has, it’s pretty easy to even support the crazy stuff like mixins and contextual parameters (if I’m not speaking too loosely while avoiding proper terms!).

              A lot of the crazy stuff won’t optimize, but at least it goes to show how it’s not really tying JavaScript’s hands even when requiring TS everywhere.

      • Dr M
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        61 year ago

        thanks to eslint enforcing it in the default rules it’s necessary for most typescript projects

        • Nato Boram
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          41 year ago

          Except that you should use Prettier for formatting instead of ESLint. That said, semicolons are useless noise

            • @[email protected]
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              1 year ago

              It adds even more auto formatting rules so you can basically stop thinking about formatting entirely. I used to be opinionated about formatting but now I just go with whatever prettier does. It’s not always the best but it’s consistent and it’s a big chunk of my brain I can free up for things that matter. It also formats things safely so you don’t run into those weird edge cases where semicolons matter if you choose to turn them off.

              • @[email protected]
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                31 year ago

                Aren’t some of the scenarios for needing a semicolon logical-domain problems and not syntax issues? I wouldn’t trust autoformatting to spot a logical problem, though I also hope no one is writing code that flippantly. (as if honest mistakes aren’t common enough!)

                • @[email protected]
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                  31 year ago

                  Maybe there’s some edge case but in my years of using prettier I haven’t encountered one once.

          • Andrew
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            11 year ago

            Never used eslint. prettier is a must. semicolons are only needed to split some rare TS syntax lines.

      • @[email protected]
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        41 year ago

        I wouldn’t do it without an auto formatter. With prettier it will catch potential no semi colon issues.

        • Andrew
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          11 year ago

          You absolutely have to use prettier with JS. I don’t think there is auto adding missing semicolons in C/C++ though, it would be very useful.

        • @[email protected]
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          01 year ago

          I tried prettier and I thought it was literally making my code uglier. It’s eslint --fix for me.

      • EtzBetz
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        1 year ago

        Yes, true. I also did setup so that any missing semicolon will be added, because I got sick of not inserting them sometimes and then some code was without them and some was. (Before I tested just leaving them all out, out of fun, so I got into the habit of just leaving them out regularly)

  • @[email protected]
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    121 year ago

    Вгь, Iмa gо sрrinкlе sоме cугilliс снаггастегs аll оvег sомеоnе’s lаrаvеl vаlidатiоn гules

    (The аеос’s are the most evil ones)

  • Chaphasilor [he/him]
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    81 year ago

    Just remove everything that looks like a semicolons, problem solved. You don’t need semicolons in JS

  • @[email protected]
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    81 year ago

    Why did Unicode even allow these symbols even exist? What happened to using a single encoding for similar symbols like in CJK? Uriel must be rolling furiously in his grave rn

    • @[email protected]
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      1 year ago

      Because the point of unicode is to accurately depict every sort of writing regardless of format, not to make a neat table of every unique glyph. Fonts may want to render the two differently or treat them differently. Same reason why there’s a difference between an em dash and a quotation line mark

      Same reason why unicode is full of random characters that only ever appear like thrice in some Russian coptic manuscript from the 3rd century - it’s about being able to depict something, not perceived usefulness

      Also excuse my ignorance, but who’s Uriel? Because right now I just have the mental image of a very upset archangel which I’m guessing is not what you’re referring to. I mean it could be - I’m pretty sure unicode would fall under his domain of literature

  • @[email protected]
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    41 year ago

    Use both the latin x and the cyrillic х as variable names in the same scope. Your coworkers will thank you.

  • Jordan Lund
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    31 year ago

    The Greek question mark is a fraction of a mm thicker. :)

    I got used to seeing the same thing between O and 0 in certain fonts. O is wider than 0.