Re: Unicode in the Curriculum?

From: Asmus Freytag (t) <asmus-inc_at_ix.netcom.com>
Date: Wed, 6 Jan 2016 15:19:09 -0800

+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@unicode.org] On Behalf Of Ken Whistler
Sent: Wednesday, January 6, 2016 7:44 AM
To: Andre Schappo <A.Schappo@lboro.ac.uk>
Cc: unicode@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

Received on Wed Jan 06 2016 - 17:20:39 CST