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   Foone🏳️‍⚧️ (foone@digipres.club)'s status on Tuesday, 23-Apr-2024 04:55:25 JST Foone🏳️‍⚧️

   The Roman empire fell because their Roman numerals weren't a form of positional notation, so they couldn't figure out binary. Their computers were terrible.

   • GreenSkyOverMe (Monika) repeated this.
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     James Grimmelmann (jtlg@mastodon.lawprofs.org)'s status on Tuesday, 23-Apr-2024 04:55:24 JST James Grimmelmann

     in reply to

     @foone “One of the main causes of the fall of the Roman Empire was that, lacking zero, they had no way to indicate successful termination of their C programs." – Robert Firth

     GreenSkyOverMe (Monika) repeated this.
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     Mark T. Tomczak (mark@mastodon.fixermark.com)'s status on Tuesday, 23-Apr-2024 04:56:03 JST Mark T. Tomczak

     in reply to

     • James Grimmelmann

     @jtlg @foone Yes. Hence the invention of the "triumvirate," a method for deciding if a program succeeded by running it three times; if all three runs agreed on the output, the run could be considered successful.

     This was incredibly inefficient and left Rome vulnerable to sacking by the Hypervisigoths in the 5th Century.

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     rrb (rrb@allthingstech.social)'s status on Tuesday, 23-Apr-2024 04:56:16 JST rrb

     in reply to

     • James Grimmelmann

     @jtlg @foone

     Nor terminate their strings.

     I would assume that any printf statement would go on forever. And strcpy would have to do a buffer overflow. They would have to wait until the late 1970s for strncpy to make up for this.

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     Jos Dingjan (happydisciple@mendeddrum.org)'s status on Tuesday, 23-Apr-2024 04:56:26 JST Jos Dingjan

     in reply to

     • James Grimmelmann

     @foone @jtlg The Romans’ predecessor to C was XCIX.

     GreenSkyOverMe (Monika) repeated this.
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     karman (rkarman@mastodon.world)'s status on Tuesday, 23-Apr-2024 04:56:43 JST karman

     in reply to

     • James Grimmelmann
     • Jos Dingjan

     @happydisciple @foone @jtlg On the other hand, their successor to C had built in build&test automation.

     (Oh dear, just drag me out back and put me out of my misery for this one, it’s soooo bad)