Talk:163: Donald Knuth

In Pascal you define the lower and upper bounds of an array when you declare it, e.g.,

 anArray[-5 .. 5] OF integer

which has always struck me as a much better idea than having arrays always starting at 0. Jstout (talk) 20:41, 18 February 2014 (UTC)

Why the swipe at Ada? I don't know about "the programming language of the future", but it's not a historical footnote either. It's used in many safety critical systems such as flight control, trains, even banking, and not just because that's what was used in the past. This language is still heavily used in these areas and is still being updated under MIL-STD and ISO.--108.162.217.185 15:33, 18 January 2015 (UTC)

Wikipedia verifies your claims. Removed. Suspender guy (talk) 20:28, 9 October 2015 (UTC)

Same is true of BASIC; you can specify any range, including negative numbers (I have used this). I program in C as well though --108.162.245.140 03:29, 24 December 2015 (UTC)

Actually, it depends on your version of BASIC. Early versions of BASIC had the OPTION BASE 0 and OPTION BASE 1 commands that would change the intial index of _all_ arrays to 0 or 1 respectively. 141.101.77.182 16:41, 29 April 2020 (UTC)Jurjen

Not related to the comic, but I think this is where the comic begins to look more detailed compared to the last 161 strips. I am talking about the art style. It is starting to look like the more familiar 400-current strips.Boeing-787lover 15:25, 29 June 2018 (UTC)

I feel like there’s an extra element to the joke not represented here? “Different tasks call for different conventions”: There are also different social conventions involved when casually asking a professor a question vs. rappelling through their skylight to ask that question! Am I crazy or is this valid?

Could you elaborate? --FaviFake (talk) 14:31, 11 May 2025 (UTC)