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same is true. These symbolisms have evolved over hundreds of years. But current data processing is rooted not only in punch-card records but in the few symbols inherited from the typewriter keyboard. Only two of the elementary algebraic functions exist, but no multiplication or division sign. Why? Because on type-written paper a lower-case x could be read as multiply and / as divide. As the typewriter went electric and became a terminal, two additions had to be made: zero and one could no longer be upper-case O and lower-case l. Otherwise, data processing is still operating in the pre-computer age defined by this old keyboard (and by computer I mean the modern, stored-program computer originally conceived by John von Neumann). Without intrinsic numeric and array processing as in APL and a few other languages, which require symbolism as their foundation, computer science can hardly be said to exist in the normal, operating world of business, government and everyday work. The consequent limited viewpoint engenders such gross errors and will cause others. And repairing this particular error at a cost of millions will do nothing to enhance current programs; on
Communications of the ACM – Association for Computing Machinery
Published: May 1, 1997
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