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=-1.3 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,INVALID_MSGID autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 109fba,baaf5f793d03d420 X-Google-Attributes: gid109fba,public X-Google-Thread: fc89c,97188312486d4578 X-Google-Attributes: gidfc89c,public X-Google-Thread: 1014db,6154de2e240de72a X-Google-Attributes: gid1014db,public X-Google-Thread: 103376,97188312486d4578 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public From: Kent Budge Subject: Re: What's the best language to start with? [was: Re: Should I learn C or Pascal?] Date: 1996/09/27 Message-ID: <324BF0E1.74A7@sandia.gov>#1/1 X-Deja-AN: 185662119 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=us-ascii organization: Sandia National Laboratories mime-version: 1.0 newsgroups: comp.lang.c,comp.lang.c++,comp.unix.programmer,comp.lang.ada x-mailer: Mozilla 3.0b6 (X11; I; SunOS 5.4 sun4m) Date: 1996-09-27T00:00:00+00:00 List-Id: Jay Martin wrote: ... > 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. Sorry to see this degenerating into a flame war. Hope I'm not putting more gasoline on the fire ... The mathematical concept of "successor to i", which corresponds quite closely to the C notation "i++", has been a fundamental part of mathematics (in the guise of typographical number theory) since at least the time of Hilbert. I agree that the correspondence between the ++ operator and the autoincrement address mode on the old PDP is sufficiently close to make it surprising that Richie didn't get his inspiration in this way. But if he says he didn't (why should he lie?) and if his background is as a mathematician, then I accept that the inspiration was the concept of "successor to i" in typographical number theory. Incidentally (to go off on a completely different tangent) I really miss the ol' PDP-11 ... the only assembly language I've used that was really a pleasure to work in. Sure, it was 16 bit and the floating point and memory management were a kludgy add-on ... but the basic integer instruction set and addressing modes were beautifully simple and simply beautiful. kgbudge@sandia.gov (usual disclaimer)