[REBOL] Re: Correct Behaviour? R.I.P.
From: jeff:rebol at: 5-Jul-2001 17:12
Howdy howdy, Joel:
> But if this thread has gotten to the point where we're
> dealing in highly distorted exaggerations, put-down
> references to "academic correctness" or "those of the
> REDESIGN REBOL mindset", and appeals to rock and roll as
> replacements for sincere (and vigorous and humorous, too!)
> discussion of how to write better code in the real world,
> then I have to say that it's passed the point of
> diminishing returns for me.
My exaggerations are never distorted. :-) And my bringing
up Rock and Roll was not a replacement for vigorous and
humourous discussion concerning the 0/1 question, but was,
in fact, a completely sincere, vigorous, and humorous
contribution to that discussion! Guess my sense of humor
is 1 base indexed, or something. :-)
Also, I didn't know we were talking about "writing better
code". I was under the impression we were debating the
relative merits of the design decision behind REBOL being
one base indexed, as opposed to (what I think you're
arguing) the more "superior" zero base indexing.
What I've tried to do, other than provide amusement, is to
present my understanding of the justification behind
REBOL's one-base indexing -- that it has a lot to do with
conceptual portability, but maybe I've been to round about
in getting there? Supporting this, I've argued that
zero-based indexing is less intuitive for most (but
certainly not all) worldly applications.
We can judge REBOL design based on pure mathematics, ease
of use, aesthetics, conciseness, consistency, many
different criteria.
If the goal of REBOL was "academic correctness", then it
may be appropriate to judge it based on correctness, the
ease with which you can prove functions, etc. If the goal
of REBOL is to help people work with direct memory and
arrays, then many of these considerations wrt to zero based
indexing might be more important.
The "goals of REBOL" are hard to enumerate (at least I'm
not especially good at it), but I can say that one-based
indexing is as fundamental to the "goals of REBOL" as
anything else, and it is from its goals that REBOL should
be judged. Maybe the problem here is in the articulation
of the "goals of REBOL".
Don't know what to say-- that's how I view my contribution
to our discussion. The discussion has been fun, and I hope
it was useful for someone reading along, if it has not be
for you, Mr. Joel.
Cheers!
-jeff
