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Are the characters used in syntax of most programming languages dependent on the keys of the standard keyboard or was the standard keyboard made specifically to allow programming with these keys? (lemm.ee)

submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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The title would probably be confusing, but I could not make it better than this. I noticed that most programming languages are limited to the alphanumerical set along with the special characters present in a general keyboard. I wondered if this posed a barrier for developers on what characters they were limited to program in, or if it was intentional from the start that these keys would be the most optimal characters for a program to be coded in by a human and was later adopted as a standard for every user. Basically, are the modern keyboards built around programming languages or are programming languages built around these keyboards?

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[–] BradleyUffner 3 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Some of the "toy" languages used for code-golf can use some very non standard characters. Saying "all programming languages" is going to be very restrictive.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

That’s a little pedantic, don’t you think?

[–] BradleyUffner 1 points 1 year ago

Ohh very much so. This wasn't meant as a criticism of OP's question. I was just trying to make sure they were aware of all the niche programming languages out there, especially the ones that use some rather exotic character sets.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Fixed 'all'. I tried to acknowledge that there may be other languages that may not follow this rule, but I seem to have not noticed this mistake.