[REBOL] Re: Correct Behaviour? Was False = 2 ????
From: joel:neely:fedex at: 5-Jul-2001 12:16
Jeff Kreis wrote:
> David Letterman counts down from 10 to 1 not 9 to 0, NASA
> does the same.
>
NASA does, in fact, "count down" to zero. That's the point at
which lauch occurs.
To be more precise, NASA doesn't "count down" at all. The
mission clock is initialized to a negative time, and counts
forward (for successful launches, at least) through zero (the
time of launch) and then into positive times as the mission
proceeds.
If you'll listen closely you'll hear this sort of thing:
T minus one hour and counting...
T minus fifteen minutes and counting...
T minus thirty seconds and counting...
leading down to
T minus ten... nine... eight...
where the "T minus..." part is probably omitted because it's
hard for slow-talking Southerners to get all of that out in
one second... ;-)
> It's only some groups of programmers that think it natural
> to number things starting from zero. The rest of the world
> orders things starting with 1.
>
My watch (which tells 24-hour time) numbers hours as 0 thru 23,
minutes as 0 thru 59, and seconds as 0 thru 59. REBOL seems
quite willing to go along with that...
>> midnight: 00:00:00
== 0:00
>> type? midnight
== time!
I asked a few of my friends, "How many children do you have?"
and received answers summarized as follows:
0: 5
1: 1
2: 2
3: 1
So far everyone has found the above summary quite comprehensible.
-jn-
--
___________________________________________________________________
The purpose of computing is insight, not numbers!
- R. W. Hamming
joel'dot'neely'at'fedex'dot'com
