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Re: repeating something n times

Newsgroups	comp.programming
Subject	Re: repeating something n times
References	(1 earlier) <jt7jdv$247$1@dont-email.me> <b73472b3-9e35-45e4-b9cf-ab8366f4e770@googlegroups.com> <jtsqtf$q73$2@dont-email.me> <R-ydnZ86Os78q5_NnZ2dnUVZ_hSdnZ2d@giganews.com> <pgxMr.866349$ME5.164830@fx22.am4>
From	Aaron W. Hsu <arcfide@sacrideo.us>
Message-ID	<7eCdnc2DmtjORJ_NnZ2dnUVZ_q6dnZ2d@giganews.com> (permalink)
Date	2012-07-15 09:53 -0500

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"BartC" <bc@freeuk.com> writes:

>"Aaron W. Hsu" <arcfide@sacrideo.us> wrote in message
>news:R-ydnZ86Os78q5_NnZ2dnUVZ_hSdnZ2d@giganews.com...

>> As noted elsewhere, it's not clear whether repeat (4) is meant to be
>> doing four times or whether it is repeating up to, but not including 4.

>Your thinking is zero-based. That languages I create are one-based. (That 
>also means certain types of loops are awkward in languages such as C which 
>like to count 0 to N-1.)

My main point is that the pattern 'for (i = 0; i < N; i++)' is not 
inherently more difficult to understand as a pattern than 'repeat (N)'. 
Maybe there are more technical opportunities to make mistakes in typing, 
but if you view the above as a pattern, something that has much more 
syntactic constraint on it than C's technical restrictions, then its 
not nearly so bad. Programmers don't read that for loop in the literal 
semantics of C, but it maps directly to 'iteration over N values' or some 
equivalent. Now, they had to learn that, somehow, but they would also 
have to learn how 'repeat (N)' works, and my main point is that these are 
not inherently cognitively harder to grasp. 

My main programming languages are C, Scheme, and APL. Three very different 
languages, with different means of abstraction. They each take time to 
learn well, and each of them has warts and quirks. Each provides 
abstractions facilities differen than the others, and I often find that 
I like to use one over the other because those abstractions in that 
language fit better to the problem I am working on. IMO, C's lack of a 
good syntactic abstraction mechanism makes the issue of looping 
constructs more of an issue, whereas in Scheme they are a non-issue, 
because you have infinitely many as you want. APL side-steps the 
problem entirely (including that of index origin) by changing the way you 
need to think about the problem, making explicit looping something you 
avoid, rather than making it the main course. 

The tradeoff in C's simplicity and level of abstraction is that some 
operations are represented by more tokens, with more explicit book keeping, 
but that is not necessarily a negative.

-- 
Aaron W. Hsu | arcfide@sacrideo.us | http://www.sacrideo.us
Programming is just another word for the lost art of thinking.

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Re: repeating something n times "BartC" <bc@freeuk.com> - 2012-07-06 21:56 +0100
  Re: repeating something n times Ben Bacarisse <ben.usenet@bsb.me.uk> - 2012-07-06 22:16 +0100
    Re: repeating something n times "BartC" <bc@freeuk.com> - 2012-07-06 23:18 +0100
  Re: repeating something n times malcolm.mclean5@btinternet.com - 2012-07-14 14:11 -0700
    Re: repeating something n times "BartC" <bc@freeuk.com> - 2012-07-14 23:11 +0100
      Re: repeating something n times Ike Naar <ike@iceland.freeshell.org> - 2012-07-14 23:37 +0000
        Re: repeating something n times "BartC" <bc@freeuk.com> - 2012-07-15 01:16 +0100
          Re: repeating something n times malcolm.mclean5@btinternet.com - 2012-07-14 17:35 -0700
            Re: repeating something n times Aaron W. Hsu <arcfide@sacrideo.us> - 2012-07-14 22:23 -0500
          Re: repeating something n times Aaron W. Hsu <arcfide@sacrideo.us> - 2012-07-14 22:19 -0500
            Re: repeating something n times "BartC" <bc@freeuk.com> - 2012-07-15 11:00 +0100
      Re: repeating something n times malcolm.mclean5@btinternet.com - 2012-07-14 17:44 -0700
      Re: repeating something n times Aaron W. Hsu <arcfide@sacrideo.us> - 2012-07-14 22:17 -0500
        Re: repeating something n times "BartC" <bc@freeuk.com> - 2012-07-15 11:49 +0100
          Re: repeating something n times Aaron W. Hsu <arcfide@sacrideo.us> - 2012-07-15 09:53 -0500
      Re: repeating something n times Rui Maciel <rui.maciel@gmail.com> - 2012-07-15 12:18 +0100
        Re: repeating something n times "BartC" <bc@freeuk.com> - 2012-07-15 13:21 +0100
          Re: repeating something n times Willem <willem@toad.stack.nl> - 2012-07-15 13:02 +0000
            Re: repeating something n times "BartC" <bc@freeuk.com> - 2012-07-15 14:36 +0100
              Re: repeating something n times Willem <willem@toad.stack.nl> - 2012-07-15 14:18 +0000
                Re: repeating something n times "BartC" <bc@freeuk.com> - 2012-07-15 15:45 +0100
                Re: repeating something n times Willem <willem@toad.stack.nl> - 2012-07-15 16:25 +0000
                Re: repeating something n times "BartC" <bc@freeuk.com> - 2012-07-15 18:02 +0100
          Re: repeating something n times Rui Maciel <rui.maciel@gmail.com> - 2012-07-15 15:10 +0100
            Re: repeating something n times "BartC" <bc@freeuk.com> - 2012-07-15 16:10 +0100
              Re: repeating something n times malcolm.mclean5@btinternet.com - 2012-07-15 13:00 -0700
    Re: repeating something n times Aaron W. Hsu <arcfide@sacrideo.us> - 2012-07-14 21:55 -0500
      Re: repeating something n times "io_x" <a@b.c.invalid> - 2012-07-17 20:47 +0200
        Re: repeating something n times "io_x" <a@b.c.invalid> - 2012-07-18 14:19 +0200
          Re: repeating something n times Aaron W. Hsu <arcfide@sacrideo.us> - 2012-07-18 12:55 -0500
            Re: repeating something n times malcolm.mclean5@btinternet.com - 2012-07-18 11:57 -0700

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