> Much like how curly braces in C are placed because back in the day you needed you punch card deck to be editable, but we got stuck with it even after we stared using screens.

Can you expand on this? What do curly braces have anything to do with punch card decks being editable? What do screens?

▲ noosphr 4 days ago | parent [-]

Each punch card was it's own line of text.

By putting the final curly brace on it's own card, and hence line, it meant you could add lines to blocks without having to change the old last line.

E.g. the following code meant you only had to type a new card and insert it.

     for(i=0;i<10;i++){         /* Card 1 */
          printf("%d ", i);     /* Card 2 */
     }                          /* Card 3 */

     for(i=0;i<10;i++){         /* Card 1 */
          printf("%d ", i);     /* Card 2 */
          printf("%d\n", i*i);  /* Card 3 */
     }                          /* Card 4 */

But for following had to edit and replace an old card as well.

     for(i=0;i<10;i++){         /* Card 1 */
          printf("%d ", i);}    /* Card 2 */
     
     for(i=0;i<10;i++){         /* Card 1 */
          printf("%d ", i);     /* Card 2' */
          printf("%d\n", i*i);} /* Card 3 */

This saved a bit of typing and made errors less likely.

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jcranmer 3 days ago | parent | next [-]

I'm dubious of this explanation because C itself largely postdates punched cards as a major medium of data storage, and some quick searches doesn't produce any evidence of people using punch cards with C or Unix.

	▲	noosphr 3 days ago \| parent [-]
		Ed was also line oriented. Using regex to edit lines instead of typing them out was a step up, but not much of one. Also my father definitely had C punch cards in the 80s.

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3 days ago | parent | prev [-]

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