Communication is difficult. Whether between humans, machines, or a combination of the two, trying to translate meaningful information is a lossy process.

Converting programming languages to use the new Unicode standard is hard, but once it’s in place, you get this marvellous feature-add: emoji compatibility. No longer do we have to make faces with symbols or use platform-specific emoticons. Rejoice in the extended character set.

Emoji have a rich history as a way to allow the communication of ideas in a reduced amount of data. They date back to a time where this was important: SMS communications in Japan. However, as social networks feverishly try to clamber onto this bandwagon, their implementations of the standard create issues with miscommunication that aren’t possible with a 12×12 pictograph.

We’ll discuss the history of emoji, cross-platform adoption, the Unicode standard, and emoji accessibility in web applications.

Programming languages are repeatedly touted to have strange edge cases. Footguns. Wats. The canonical ‘wat’ talk shows some of these for Ruby and JavaScript, but doesn’t go into any detail into the ‘why’.

In this talk, take a tour through a multitude of programming languages; and see not only the ‘wat’, but the ‘why’: is it a misunderstanding based on an assumption from another programming language? A compiler optimisation? A known bug that can’t be fixed due to backward compatibility concerns? Attendees will come away from this talk with a greater understanding about how to turn a ‘wat’ into a ‘why’.