this post was submitted on 09 Jul 2023
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Programmer Humor

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[–] TheWoozy@lemmy.world 14 points 1 year ago (2 children)

In old FORTAN variable starting with I...N are integers. This is how the practice began.

[–] pazukaza@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Oh wow, I thought it was because "i" was a short way of writing "index". Then "j" was just logical after that.

[–] TheWoozy@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

You are still correct! The letters I & n are the first letters on Index.

[–] emptyother@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

Learned that VERY recently from here, at NDC Oslo 2023, he mentioned it around 42:54. The whole talk is worth watching, its about the history of javascript all the way back to FORTRAN (the talk itself starts at 25:03).