Emoji is the 21st century's method of communication. So no-one would be surprised that a modern enterprise company like Depth would want to follow, right? That should answer all your questions, except one - how do you go around using emoji on a website like GitHub (and still look professional 😁)?
There are many ways in which you'd do this. That's what this article is about.
The first way of using emoji is simple. Using emoji in discussions. Emoji in discussions can be used to convey anything. Difficult to explain something? There's an emoji. 💡 Not sure if the collaborator your speaking to speaks the same language? There's an emoji. 💡 Emoji is very useful - you've got to give kudos to the Japanese for that one.
Emoji in discussion is useful to convey concepts or show signs of affection ❤️, thanks 🫂 or other cultural medium of appreciation 🙇. It's away to simplify and modernise long texts; no need for that long-forgotten TL;DR at the start of every message.
Emoji can be used to show your reaction - as subtle as you want it. They portray what we think of someone else's comment, and can be used to express approval or disapproval without needing to create another message and fill up the discussion. Reactions are also useful for community upvoting/downvoting, especially for big projects with lots of feature requests. GitHub lets us use the following emoji to react to other's messages: 👍, 👎, 😄, 🎉, 😕, ❤️, 🚀 and 👀.
Unsure of what these emoji mean? Here's a little definition of each for your convenience.
- 👍 Thumbs up: form of positive acknoledgment - Looks Good To Me, I agree!, Sure!, Okay, Let's give it a try, Upvote etc.
- 👎 Thumbs down: form of negative acknoledgment - Doesn't look right, I disagree.., Unsure, Not possible, Having second thoughts, Downvote etc.
- 😄 Smile: form of willingness, nostalgia, or other positive emotion - Thanks!, I agree!, Sure!, I'm fine with this! etc.
- 🎉 Confetti: form of excitedness or success - It builds!, It works!, Let's get this started!,
- 😕 Confusion: form of disapproval or lack of understanding - Something's wrong, I don't understand, I don't agree, Unsure, I see faults etc.
- ❤️ Heart: form of thanks or appreciation - Thanks!, How kind!, That means so much to me!, You'd do that? etc.
- 🚀 Rocket: form of experimentation, willingness or success - Let's get this started!, #InsiderBuild, Oops lol it crashed, It might not work but let's try, Go ahead! etc.
- 👀 Eyes: form of general acknoledgment - Okay, Sure, I don't mind, No worries, Got it etc.
Ever heard of Gitmoji? Yep, that term really exists. It's a standard for including emoji inside your commits.
At Depth, we encourage our team to use that standard as much as possible for two reasons: a) it makes the GitHub repo page look colourful 😁 (but honestly, it makes such a change seeing all that lovely colour 🎨 on the front-page rather than boring messages in grey font! 🥱) and b) sometimes, emoji in commits is just more descriptive than the commit messages themselves 🤯! Writing commit messages is long and tedious, and it's always difficult to include the right wording, especially when making just a quick change, or so many changes you can't keep track of what you've been doing! 🤦
Just putting a little emoji before your commit message really makes all the difference! 💡
Ok, not literally. please don't put random emoji in important pieces of code
This sub-article is now called 4️⃣ Emoji in code comments (😅)
Using emoji in code comments is exactly like using emoji in commits. It makes the code seem a) more casual and friendly and b) more descriptive! Sometimes even developers need a little bit of colour in their lives after hours of looking at the same boring file, fixing the same boring problem.. 😴 (and when I say colour I mean emoji. Looks like today's not your day, code highlighting 😢)
It can also be used to display guides and short bits of info, as well as titbits.
Just a side-note, but I thought it was worth including in this article - but titbits are a great way of displaying information.
Usually starting with the 📝 emoji, titbits are an extra and perhaps irrelevant piece of information, or a tip. Titbits are useful in code comments, git commit descriptions, or wiki and README articles.
As well as this, '📝' is also the Gitmoji for documentation!