From: krewat@kilonet.net (Arthur Krewat)
Subject: [TUHS] RIP John Backus
Date: Sat, 17 Mar 2018 14:52:29 -0400 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <1881ddbc-690a-2901-a68e-91334322065d@kilonet.net> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <ecea8e70-4256-2476-1e3e-aa942a8627f9@mcjones.org>
On 3/17/2018 1:49 PM, Paul McJones wrote:
> It first ran on the IBM 704, whose index registers subtracted (as did
> the follow-on 709, 7090, etc), so array indexing went from higher
> memory addresses to lower.
Leave it to IBM to do something backwards.
Of course, that was in 1954, so I can't complain, it was 11 years before
I was born. But that's ... odd.
Was subtraction easier than addition with digital electronics back then?
I would think that they were both the same level of effort (clock
cycles) so why do something obviously backwards logically?
ak
next prev parent reply other threads:[~2018-03-17 18:52 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 41+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
[not found] <mailman.19.1521302091.3788.tuhs@minnie.tuhs.org>
2018-03-17 17:49 ` Paul McJones
2018-03-17 18:52 ` Arthur Krewat [this message]
2018-03-18 3:39 ` Greg 'groggy' Lehey
2018-03-18 7:35 ` Otto Moerbeek
2018-03-18 13:33 Noel Chiappa
[not found] <mailman.21.1521314548.3788.tuhs@minnie.tuhs.org>
2018-03-17 20:01 ` Paul McJones
2018-03-17 20:14 ` Paul McJones
2018-03-17 22:27 ` Steve Johnson
[not found] <mailman.17.1521243734.3788.tuhs@minnie.tuhs.org>
2018-03-17 14:47 ` Paul McJones
2018-03-17 15:54 ` Dave Horsfall
-- strict thread matches above, loose matches on Subject: below --
2018-03-16 21:52 Dave Horsfall
2018-03-16 23:42 ` Dan Stromberg
2018-03-17 0:08 ` Dave Horsfall
2018-03-17 0:26 ` Arthur Krewat
2018-03-17 0:36 ` Dave Horsfall
2018-03-17 1:40 ` Charles H Sauer
2018-03-17 1:57 ` Nemo
2018-03-17 7:20 ` Bakul Shah
2018-03-17 13:43 ` Clem Cole
2018-03-17 17:06 ` Steve Simon
2018-03-17 19:15 ` Pierre DAVID
2018-03-17 19:41 ` Charles Anthony
2018-03-18 11:02 ` Steve Simon
2018-03-17 19:22 ` Tim Bradshaw
2018-03-17 19:28 ` Mike Markowski
2018-03-18 18:51 ` Paul Winalski
2018-03-18 21:07 ` Clem Cole
2018-03-19 14:50 ` Dan Cross
2018-03-19 15:43 ` Clem Cole
2018-03-19 15:46 ` Clem Cole
2018-03-19 17:39 ` Paul Winalski
2018-03-19 17:43 ` George Michaelson
2018-03-19 18:16 ` Steve Nickolas
2018-03-19 17:48 ` Clem Cole
2018-03-19 17:59 ` Jon Forrest
2018-03-19 18:40 ` Tom Ivar Helbekkmo
2018-03-19 19:40 ` Arthur Krewat
2018-03-19 15:55 ` Clem Cole
2018-03-18 21:26 ` Tim Bradshaw
2018-03-19 0:26 ` Steve Johnson
2018-03-19 14:26 ` Warner Losh
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