Yes. Memory and storage were at a very high premium until the 1990s, and when C was first being developed, it wasn’t uncommon for computers to output to printers (that’s why print() and co are named what they are), so every character was at a premium. In the latter case, you were literally paying in ink and paper by the character. These contributed to this convention that we’re still stuck with today in C.
IIRC older DOS versions were also limited to 8.3 filenames, so even filenames had a max limit of 8 characters + 3 extension. May it was a limitation of the file system, can’t quite remember.
Thanks for the insight! I think this kind of convention that once made some sense, is now exclusively harmful, but is still followed meticulously, is often called “tradition” and is one of the high speed engines that let humanity drive towards extinction.
Yes. Memory and storage were at a very high premium until the 1990s, and when C was first being developed, it wasn’t uncommon for computers to output to printers (that’s why print() and co are named what they are), so every character was at a premium. In the latter case, you were literally paying in ink and paper by the character. These contributed to this convention that we’re still stuck with today in C.
IIRC older DOS versions were also limited to 8.3 filenames, so even filenames had a max limit of 8 characters + 3 extension. May it was a limitation of the file system, can’t quite remember.
Thanks for the insight! I think this kind of convention that once made some sense, is now exclusively harmful, but is still followed meticulously, is often called “tradition” and is one of the high speed engines that let humanity drive towards extinction.
Wait, but they didn’t print out the source code right? Or did they use teletypes to develop?
Basically yeah. ed the editor was designed with that in mind
Oh, that makes a lot of sense then.
After all, it is the standard text editor
spoiler
uff, doesn’t feel right if it isn’t KasaneTeto saying this :/