This reminds me of putting marquees in the window.status like 20 years ago
My take is that it's only a matter of time before emojis creep into every area where text is used.
Let's hope they won't ever become a mainstream part of programming languages.
I've seen attempts where any connection between the symbol and what the method was doing was purely coincidental.
"Emojicode is an open-source, full-blown programming language consisting of emojis."
knowing a few people in this world, I am sure that this will certainly happen way before you can have variables named α, β, γ
I've used θ in code dealing with angles before.
For an even more extreme version, look at Perl6's atomic operators: https://docs.perl6.org/language/unicode_ascii#Atomic_operato... (or any other operators on this page for that matter).
IMO, it's not a "bad idea". Code is meant to be read, not written. If it renders the code more readable, then that's a win. But obviously, whether those symbols actually make the code more readable is debatable.
In general, it would be rather silly to use greek letters for variable names. Yet sometimes, they tend to make numerical code much more readable when you are copying a mathematical formula verbatim.
Compare using "πθ" versus "M_PI*theta" several times on the same formula, for example.
On OS X, and I assume others, you can add items to be automatically replaced, so something like "!t" could become a unicode theta if you want.
def <emoji>
puts "helloworld"
end
> helloworld
I've seen some "cute" github projects that use them, but they're obviously not for real life use since emojis are tough to type.
If you consider Amp mainstream, or a programming language, it’s already too late.
edit: on the flip side, it's pretty cool for passphrases (where allowed)