Some questions on Slate syntax

[Lee Salzman]

Thinking order does not help, as that was what I was thinking when I
wrote that it makes no intuitive sense to me elsewhere. A given set of
numbers does not describe order, it merely has order. Why do street
addresses start at 1, why does the alphabet start with 'A', why do arrays
start at 0? Because we just said made them so. You have a bijection
between some things with intrinsic order and your symbols (or numbers
or counting numbers or whatever) for manipulating that order, whatever
is handy for the task.  0 is handy.

I can't really find a justification for preferring a given set of 
indices for
addressing things other than appealing to handiness. Counting and
ordering are just entirely different concepts to me.

It's all pretty arbitrary and to call it "natural principle" is a bit of 
an exaggeration.
I have friends who the mere thought of a number scares them and throws 
them into
mental paralysis. So "natural principle" in this case may be better 
described as the
lore of mathematicians. Then again, depending on who you talk to, 0 is 
an ordinal
number, doh! But if I am going to choose some arbitrary theoretical 
stance, I will
choose the one that is handiest for the domain, computers.

Lee

Shaping wrote:

>> It's not just tailored more to how computers work. When it
>> comes down to it, it makes as much intuitive sense as any
>> other way. Starting from the origin, how far away is some
>> thing? Giving you a spatial metaphor for working with items
>> I would argue makes it easier to see in your head what you're
>> doing. I can easily visualize grid space, but I can't easily
>> visualize a jumble of objects that I've counted.
>
> Becareful not to confuse continuous measurement with discrete 
> counting.  Both have there uses.  If you can count/order, do that 
> because it is more basic than ruling/measuring on a continuous axis.  
> Note the essential difference:
> --------------------
>    1      2     ...
> 0.0   1.0    2.0 ...
> --------------------
>
>>
>> Counting makes sense to me for talking about the size of a
>> collection, but really makes no intuitive sense to me elsewhere.
>
>
> Then think "order" not "size", and clarity will return.
>
>> Now, maybe I have been programming too long and have built
>> up a new set of intuitions,
>
>
> Indeed, all of us, but these conditionings do not preclude realignment 
> with natural principle, both in computer language and hardware 
> structure (which is yet to happen).
>
>
> Shaping
>
>