A Broken Heart
9 points by freetonik
9 points by freetonik
Interesting paragraph:
I suspect that, without the coding agent, we would have solved the Linux emoji problem in a more boring way (using an icon library) and not ended up with a weird slow emoji implementation.
Why does this need a vibecoding tag?
Effectively everything is vibecoding now π€·ββοΈ
The definition of the vibecoding tag is "Using AI/LLM, coding tools." according to /tags. This story documents the usage of such tools to both cause and to troubleshoot/resolve the problem. I enjoyed reading it! I have in the past objected to the over-application of the tag, but I don't think this is an example of "everything is vibecoding now" by any measure. It meets the letter and the spirit of the tag as described on the tags page, IMO.
Beyond that, though, it does serve as an example of what I consider "good" vibecoding submissions; that is to say, it's got technical depth and isn't merely glazing or objecting to LLM tools.
/cc @st3fan @freetonik
I don't know. I only selected web, and the moderation log says "Automatically changed from user suggestions".
I wonder if I'm the only one who finds emojis as a concept distasteful. There was a time when using them on forums was a mark of an early teen user who hadn't developed the taste and wisdom not to use them.
There is simply no need for any such things inside text, and the complexity they require in font rendering is not justifiable.
Emojis have proven to be exceedingly useful as an augment to text to help convey tone, especially in short-form communication. Whatever culture once considered them distasteful has been overtaken by a new one. There's a reason we don't complain about no longer using Middle English over Modern English.
Emojis have proven to be exceedingly useful as an augment to text to help convey tone, especially in short-form communication.
I am sure that was part of the original intent but I only ever see emojis used as unnecessary and arbitrary text decoration, not as a tone hints. ππΌπͺ
There is also an argument to be made that more thoughtful writing doesn't need emoji to deliver tone but maybe that's worth setting aside for later.
Pretty much the only emoji I use daily that doesn't have a good emoticon equivalent is the thumbs-up. (Which is probably an obscene gesture in some culture I'm not aware of.)
My last three companies have used Slack as their primary work chat and emojis in messages or as reactions have seen high use. I've seen their use as effective in replacing non-verbal signals like tone or facial expression.
I agree that more thoughtful writing doesn't need emoji to deliver tone, but the vast majority of my chat isn't trying to be thoughtful. My shitposting is very definitely not trying to be thoughtful.
The worst aspect of emojis IMO is the fact that they look drastically different on different platforms; Windows emojis look nothing like macOS/iOS emojis. It's not comparable do different fonts. They convey different visual feeling. I dislike the fact that I essentially put an image in my text, and people see a different image depending on their device.
I find it especially striking with this one in particular. Some of those look like children's toys, and some look like weapons!
I think the tone conveyed is very, very different depending on which of those the recipient's system shows.
I was very pro-emoji at one point, and I love having them to react to chat messages. But now certain kinds of emoji use are clear signifiers of LLM slop (mainly in bulleted lists), and I've soured on the whole thing by association.
I like emojis but I don't see why we had to add them to Unicode, since they aren't text. They are inline images which should be rendered as images.
If emoji were transmitted and stored as inline images, it would be much easier to display them consistently across devices and harder for software vendors to retroactively alter the meaning of text. There would be no need to endlessly bloat the Unicode standard with non-linguistic decorative symbols. As a bonus we'd all have a universal alternative to sixel for terminal graphics!
The major downsides to inline images are that they would take up more space/bandwidth and it would be impossible to make them match the style of surrounding text. Color emoji already tend to look garish and awful next to ordinary text, though, so I'm not sure it'd be that much of a downgrade.
I have some applications set up to use monochrome emoji, because they are text-oriented, and monochrome emoji match the surrounding text better. Most applications don't support this kind of fine tuning, though, and I'm hesitant to use the user-wide solution (fontconfig to ensure that Noto Color Emoji is always replaced with Noto Emoji).
I think the problem is that they were encoded as text on the Japanese cellular carriers that Unicode needed to be compatible with.
You are absolutely not alone. I find them juvenile and (in documentation) a warning sign that a project is unserious and/or vibecoded. They also mean that any change to a font retroactively changes the meaning of people's writing, which I think should be completely unacceptable. I think emoticons and kaomoji are fine when used tastefully - they're a sign of creativity from people playing with their writing system, instead of being handed a finite set of approved glyphs from above.
I use them in short blog posts as a compact tagging system (item is a link, item is in Swedish etc) to aid readers who get the content on Fedi.
I find emojis exagerated, this is the problem I see, it's like they overpower the intensity of the said feeling but! I might just be making the wrong choice of emojis (: . I like the ones made with normal keyboard symbols, more elegant and subtle ha.
