alt Hacker NewsWhat is the purpose of ASCII diagramming today? Seems like graphics are supported by every document and communications medium that I use. Is it for including directly in code?
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Is it common for graphics to be supported in the terminal?
ASCII to me represents something that can work in my term, in my source code, checks into git a bit more sanely than binary does, etc.
I still quite like it
agents can understand them. and you can view them in the terminal
My unpopular opinion is that programming is stuck in the 1970s: a lot of programmers use a 1970s-style terminal window to enter 1970s OS commands, which run on a 1970s processor architecture (which is slowly getting replaced by a 1980s architecture). They use a 1970s editor (which is much superior to the other 1970s editor) to write programs in a 1970s language. ASCII diagrams are just a symptom of this. Hardware is millions of times better than in the 1970s, but programming is stuck in local optimums for historical reasons.
(Not to take anything away from Monosketch, which is cool.)
I use this for traking change with git.
Same reason people love and swear by games like nethack. ASCII art is cool af.
That "seems" is doing so much heavy lifting I got a hernia just from looking at it.
Well I can’t speak to ASCII in particular, but I create a lot of mermaid UML diagrams specifically because unlike an image, they are:
- Text searchable
- Easy to adjust
- Supported by a surprising number of markdown viewers.