4 ms·

Originally it was a Anglicization of "für" in German first used in a programming language called Superplan which was then picked up upon by FORTRAN and then it

• eru 7y ago
  Well, that doesn't really solve the mystery. The German "für" doesn't have any closer connection with loops than English "for".
  • kuschku 7y ago
    e.g. in Sums or Products, with $$ Σ_(i=0)^(20) x² $$ you'd actually pronounce that as "summe für i = 0 bis 20 von x²", which is a good argument for where it might be from.
    • eru 7y ago
      Yes, though isn't that the same when pronouncing math in English? (So it's a good explanation, but doing the detour via German doesn't give us any extra enlightenment?)
      • kuschku 7y ago
        Well I don't know how it's pronounced in English, so I didn't know that, good to know though:)
• dukoid 7y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heinz_Rutishauser https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heinz_Rutishauser I don't think it's much more intuitive in German than in English, probably goes back to the "for each" quantor.
  • bhaak 7y ago
    The for loop is the most unintuitive variant of the possible looping constructs. The others (while do/do while/endless loop) are much more straightforward. We could easily have ended up with another version. I always read it as inspired by "for values of" which at least in German is a common phrase heard in mathematical courses.
• pletnes 7y ago
  Fortran has «do» loops, no «for» loops (to my knowledge). do i = 1, N ...