Re: D3/Linux compile question

Peter McMurray wrote:
Hi Frosty
It is this convoluted and incorrect thinking that has caused the
problem in the first place.
"Incorrect" is in the eye of the beholder, I would say.

Your microwave simply indicated that you
had not asked for any minutes it did not count from zero,
No, it counted down _to_ zero. Because the terminus of the
timeline is zero, not one.

When we are counting items be it cars or babies the first complete
item is number 1. If we owe an item we have minus one. If we do not
have any items the count is zero.
I agree; none of this speaks to the question "from where do
we start to NUMBER." And, I was not counting babies, I was
calculating the age of the baby. Do you suggest that a newborn
is one year/day/hour or even one minute old?!?

The first element of an array is number 1 not number zero.
Says you! It could be number one; it could be number zero,
depending upon the numbering convention.

To put it in the sense of the number line
element 1 is that part of the line between point zero and point 1.
Remember that we are counting discrete elements and there can be no
such thing as the zeroth element.
Sure there can; if I call it "element zero" or "the array
entry whose index is zero," then that's exactly what it is.
* You conflate "counting" with "numbering." *

I guess you skipped the calculus lectures at uni :-)
I was pretty good at calculus, actually; got a couple years past
that before I changed my major from Math to Computer Science.
Even in Calculus you could see the big letter Sigma to indicate
a sum of values, where the index of the values ranged from 0 to n.
So it's not just computer scientists who start counting at zero!

Here is a good one for you I remember a Greek lass (Cobol programmer)
I worked with having a flaming row with her mother as they prepared
the plates for a wedding. Mother said 24 daughter said 23. In the
end daughter grabbed the pile and started to count as she smashed
each one down on the table she went zero, one ,two, three and
actually got to around ten before she realised the stupidity of what
she was saying.
LOL. =`:^> I would argue that what she was _saying_ was not stupid
at all, and if she had continued to smash the plates, and was then
asked how many plates had been broken, she would easily have calculated
the correct answer, twenty-four broken plates. What she was _doing_
with the plates, i.e. smashing, not counting, was the stupid part.
Unless they were really ugly plates.

Perhaps you feel that she only had 23 plates :-)
No, even if I number the stack of plates from 0 to 23 (like is
common in computers) then I can see there are 24 plates:
Count = last index - first index plus one.
The way I count: (23 - 0) + 1 is 24.
The way you count: (24 - 1) + 1 is 24.
Which is more convoluted?

The numbering scheme of the array _has no impact_ on the size
of the array. The count, i.e. the number of elements in the
array, remains constant, regardless of whether they are numbered
0 through 23, or one through 24, or Alpha through Omega.

--
frosty

Peter McMurray
"frosty" <frostyj@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:gtidnVJXVp03kiranZ2dnUVZ_g6dnZ2d@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Peter McMurray wrote:
...Does anyone know how this idiotic interpretation of zero arose
as I would love to know.

I thought about this thread this morning as I pressed
the "add 30 seconds" button on my microwave, which
started counting down from 00:30, not 01:30. My
microwave starts counting from zero, not one!

As I sipped my warmed-up left-over coffee, I browsed
some pictures of the newest additions to our family,
who are both about to turn one. When they were born,
they were not one; they were (effectively) zero. We
count ages from zero, not one!

I could go on, but I think you get the idea: it is
natural to start counting at zero, which is every
bit as valid a point on the number line as one, and
even more useful.

Let's face it the concept of zero is one of the
great gifts of the 8th century Arab world to us all.
I wholeheartedly agree with this.

--
frosty


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