• [object Object]@lemmy.ca
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    1 day ago

    Djikstra was so fucking wrong with this and people who parrot this are so annoying.

    Sure, an offset starts at zero, but an index can very well start at one. Not all arrays represent a physical offset, please stop pretending your inferior zero only indexing is in any way superior.

    Sometimes math is just simpler from one. When you’re translating math to code, one based indexes are usually better.

    • Aceticon@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      12 hours ago

      I shall not lower myself to use the newfangled Mathematical inventions of the Arabs and instead keep doing Mathematics like the Romans!

            • bstix@feddit.dk
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              5 hours ago

              Fuck the real numbers. Numbers are an abstraction.

              Zero is a “real” number. Negative 5 is a “real” number. But have you ever seen zero apples or sailed on negative 5 boats? Uh uh no you haven’t. They are not real.

              In reality there’s only existence or nonexistence, it could be a thing or it could not be anything at all, though the latter is actually impossible. All other things are then not the same as that. If you line them up you can make statements like this thing is not that thing. This is basically the succession function, and we’re already ahead of ourselves.

              From there on we can start inventing more abstractions by using Peanos axioms, but it’s all abstractions, because the second axiom state that something is the same as something, and nothing in reality is ever the same as something else.

              It’s all made up. Reality does not have numbers at all.

              • calcopiritus@lemmy.world
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                2 hours ago

                I’ve heard people argue in both sides of “is 0 a natural number?”. But I’ve never before encountered the “there are no natural numbers” argument. It’s like flipping a coin and having it land sidewise.

                • bstix@feddit.dk
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                  2 hours ago

                  Yeah sorry I am a sideways coin when I get bored.

                  It would be great if say … two atoms … were the same, so we could say that these are the same and that this is the definition of 1 and start counting and so on, but they’re just not. It’s fractals all the way down and up. The entirety of math requires an abstract definition that segments things to be the same like a pixelated resolution of reality. It only exists as an idea.