5 ms·
Fortran is the culprit
by Kilimanjaro 16y ago
Fortran is the culprit
- junkbit 16y agoTODAY IS EVERYBODY TALK LIKE FORTRAN DAY
- pistoriusp 16y agoCause Fortran's integer types where prefixed by: I - N
- Kilimanjaro 16y agoNot only prefixed, I barely remember my grandfather telling me a story about a thousand years ago identifiers where so precious, they were only ONE char long, from A to H were asigned to strings, from I to P were for integers and the rest for floats. Oh those long gone years...
- rauljara 16y agoIdentifying the first place i and j are used is a start, but it doesn't really answer the question. The question is "why?", not "where did it start?" Of the explanations on the SO page, the fact that i is the first letter of index seems like the most likely. j is popular because it follows i.
- martincmartin 16y agoNot quite. Fortran enshrined the convention, so the question becomes "Why did Fortan pick that range for integers?"
- MWinther 16y agoI don't agree that the question changes. I would argue that the fact that Fortran enshrined the convention is a more relevant answer than the answer to why Fortran picked that range. The reason being that the answer to the latter question is most likely from another domain, such as Mathematics. Although I do find the answer to the latter question interesting as well, just not as interesting as the answer to the first.
- ewiethoff 16y agoBecause mathematicians, physicists, and engineers use i through n for integers in their mathematical formulas, and Fortran was their FORmula TRANslator into computerese. (Additional fun fact: They begin their matrix row and column counts with 1, which is why Fortran array indices start at 1.)