From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: *** X-Spam-Status: No, score=3.8 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,INVALID_MSGID, RATWARE_MS_HASH,RATWARE_OUTLOOK_NONAME autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: fc89c,97188312486d4578 X-Google-Attributes: gidfc89c,public X-Google-Thread: 109fba,baaf5f793d03d420 X-Google-Attributes: gid109fba,public X-Google-Thread: 1014db,6154de2e240de72a X-Google-Attributes: gid1014db,public X-Google-Thread: 103376,97188312486d4578 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public From: "Tim Behrendsen" Subject: Re: What's the best language to start with? [was: Re: Should I learn C or Pascal?] Date: 1996/09/27 Message-ID: <01bbac7f$23e42940$87ee6fce@timpent.a-sis.com>#1/1 X-Deja-AN: 185654313 references: <51knkn$j61@dub-news-svc-8.compuserve.com> <01bba638$e913f800$87ee6fce@timpent.a-sis.com> <324844D7.1507@trw.com> <52g7f6$1fv0@uni.library.ucla.edu> content-type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 organization: A-SIS mime-version: 1.0 newsgroups: comp.lang.c,comp.lang.c++,comp.unix.programmer,comp.lang.ada Date: 1996-09-27T00:00:00+00:00 List-Id: Jay Martin wrote in article <52g7f6$1fv0@uni.library.ucla.edu>... > jsa@alexandria (Jon S Anthony) writes: > > >In article bs@research.att.com (Bjarne Stroustrup) writes: > > >> Actually, the story that ++ comes from the PDP11 instruction > >> set is a myth. Dennis Ritchie has denied it quite often, but > >> that doesn't seem to impress people. ++ is in C and C++ because > >> Dennis (being a mathematician) considered it a fundamental > > ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ > >> (and useful) operation. It was in the PDP11 instruction set > > >I don't see how that has anything to do with it. I'm a mathematician > >and I don't see it as a particularly interesting or useful operation > >to be singled out for special status (I'm not talking about the machine > >level here...) > > I don't see any mathematical justification for it either, maybe Mr > Richie should publish a paper on the fundamental nature of "++" to the > foundations of mathematical thought. It seems incredible to me that Mr > Ritchie had never seen an "increment" assembly instruction or that the > inclusion of 10+ REDUNDANT and side-effect producing operators was not > motivated by some low-level performance concern/"too lazy to write an > optimizing compiler" or an anti-software engineering desire to > minimize keystrokes on some primitive input device. If he did think > he was doing mathematics, then I would say that he is an even poorer > mathematician than he is a language designer. I don't know about mathematical thought, but if you find it difficult to imagine why increment and decrement are useful, perhaps you need to practice a bit more programming before making criticisms. -- Tim Behrendsen (tim@a-sis.com)