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From: bob@lintilla.demon.co.uk (Bob Cousins)
Subject: Re: What's the best language to start with? [was: Re: Should I learn
 C or Pascal?]
Date: 1996/09/27
Message-ID: <324b5c87.3413989@news.demon.co.uk>#1/1
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 <324844D7.1507@trw.com>	<Dy9KEL.6nD@research.att.com>
 <JSA.96Sep26151720@alexandria> <52fat5$mpt@mtinsc01-mgt.ops.worldnet.att.net>
newsgroups: comp.lang.c,comp.lang.c++,comp.unix.programmer,comp.lang.ada
Date: 1996-09-27T00:00:00+00:00
List-Id: <comp.lang.ada>


In comp.lang.c, Craig Franck wrote:

>jsa@alexandria (Jon S Anthony) wrote:
>>In article <Dy9KEL.6nD@research.att.com> 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...)
>
>Well, I'm not a mathematician, but I have noticed that a large 
>number of them have a fascination with numbers theory. Maybe the
>addition of integers seems "fundamental". I hope I do not need to
>mention that c++; blows the doors off c = c + 1; nor shall I begin
>to discuss the obvious inferiority of c := c + 1; :-)

I don't think a mathematician would write c = c + 1 either.

-- 
Bob Cousins, Software Engineer.
Home page at http://www.demon.co.uk/sirius-cybernetics/

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