Reading Roundup

Citation Needed : On Why Array Indices Start With 0, by Mike Hoye

http://exple.tive.org/blarg/2013/10/22/citation-needed/

Struct packing? Pointer arithmetic? Turns out array indices started at 0 long before C even existed, and unless you guessed that this decision was guided by yacht racing in the 50s and 60s, you’d be dead wrong. This article is incredible not because the question has finally been answered, but because it describes the humble beginnings of software engineering. Computers were different in those days…

The Rise of Worse is Better, by Richard P. Gabriel

http://dreamsongs.com/RiseOfWorseIsBetter.html

This is one of those famous papers by a genuine, old school computer scientist. The kind that probably thinks on a whole different level than you or I. This paper is incredibly interesting, not because Gabriel presents the theoretical design considerations of the most academic family of all languages, Lisp, but because he describes why Lisps have never been a valid solution in the real world.

 

Image used under CC license by David Flores.