3 ms·
A rumor I heard was that x := 4 was chosen because it looks similar to x ⇐ 4
by teddyh 5mo ago
A rumor I heard was that
x := 4
was chosen because it looks similar to
x ⇐ 4
- badsectoracula 5mo agoWhy not <= then? I'd expect both < and = to be available.
- tandr 5mo agoProbably because '<=' is very easily read as "less or equal"? (unless you are joking, of course)
- weinzierl 5mo agoBut why? := is perfectly understandable and established notation for definition. You don't get closer assignment without resorting to esoteric notation?
- pjmlp 5mo agoThat is indeed the case in Smalltalk. The Xerox keyboards had the support for ⇐, with its workstation OSes being all graphical based. When Smalltalk grew beyond Xerox PARC walls, ⇐ turned into := You can see this in the original Xerox PARC documents and books for Smalltalk.
- jdougan 5mo agoIn some of the draft versions of ASCII the positions currently taken by underscore and caret were left arrow and up arrow respectively. As late as 1985 I used terminals (LanparScope) the supported the older draft.
- teddyh 5mo agoAll Commodore machines also uses the older ASCII standards, (in addition to filling out the full 8 bit range with various graphics). It’s usually referred to as “PETSCII”, from the original Commodore “PET” series, but PETSCII was also used in the vastly more popular Commodore 64 (and 128) home computers.