From: Hugh Sasse <hgs@...>
Date: 2006-11-21T01:23:21+09:00
Subject: Re: Ruby vs Java vs c++

On Tue, 21 Nov 2006, stef wrote:

> My literacy is just fine, thank you very much.  For the sake of speed, I
> use shortcuts.

If you are using vi or vim you can program the editor to expand
abbreviations for you.  In vim you can lookup :ab in the help
system:-
:he :ab
I'm almost certain Emacs can do abbreviation expansion  as well.  There
is also automatic completion available in vim for, that matter, see 
:he compl-generic
for more on this.  Searching for tools to help with RSI will 
provide other alternatives.

You appear to be using the Pan newsreader.  I'm unfamiliar with it,
and a quick look around the pan web site turns up nothing about
configuring the editor for it, so I'd suggest you look on a Pan
mailing list about how to configure it to use you favourite editor.

> I realize you are a programmer but contrary to the machines you program,
> which interpret code literally, you hopefully have the power to INTERPRET,
> as opposed to a chip.
> Surely, you can make out that "u" = "you", etc....

This moves effort from you to the N people reading the message.
Given the way much reading is done by word shape rather than reading
individual letters, this is at best inconsiderate.  As you have
seen, it can be misconstrued as ignorance.

        Hugh