Hello /prog/ I wonder why all the gurus use smilies with noses like :-) and ;-) instead of :) and ;). Is this some sort of way for hackers to prove their identity or are they just old?
When I finished grad school in computer science I went to a smilies school to study ASCII. A lot of people seemed surprised that someone interested in computers would also be interested in smilies. They seemed to think that hacking and smiling were very different kinds of work-- that hacking was cold, precise, and methodical, and that smiling was the frenzied expression of smilers.
Both of these images are wrong. Hacking and smilers have a lot in common. In fact, of all the different types of people I've known, hackers and smilers are among the most alike.
What hackers and smilers have in common is ASCII. Along with composers, architects, and writers, what hackers and smilers are trying to do is make good things with plain text. They're not doing UNICODE per se, though if in the course of trying to make good things they feel the need to do so, they are free to send a patch.