> No, I was questioning whether you had considered his arguments at all
Ah, yes. No, I wasn't trying to disprove him. I just gave a different approach to the issue. My mind is not made up on this subject. I've been a programmer for too long: 0 is burned in my fingers and my mind.
> a machine instruction would operate on indexes, not ordinals
The interesting aspect isn't the difference between indexes and ordinals, but the difference between indexes and cardinals. The cardinals match the ordinals for normal people. For normal people, indexes have no meaning.
But the difference between indexes and cardinals aren't that easy for programmers either. In an example presented by Dijkstra a young programmer used 0 in everyday language as a cardinal replacing 1. Indexes have little meaning in real life, but cardinals do.
Good response, BTW. Thanks. It's interesting to link the concepts of ordinals and cardinals to the discussion.
Ah, yes. No, I wasn't trying to disprove him. I just gave a different approach to the issue. My mind is not made up on this subject. I've been a programmer for too long: 0 is burned in my fingers and my mind.
> a machine instruction would operate on indexes, not ordinals
The interesting aspect isn't the difference between indexes and ordinals, but the difference between indexes and cardinals. The cardinals match the ordinals for normal people. For normal people, indexes have no meaning.
But the difference between indexes and cardinals aren't that easy for programmers either. In an example presented by Dijkstra a young programmer used 0 in everyday language as a cardinal replacing 1. Indexes have little meaning in real life, but cardinals do.
Good response, BTW. Thanks. It's interesting to link the concepts of ordinals and cardinals to the discussion.