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But the "greater than sign" IS an API | 687 comments | Create New Account
Comments belong to whoever posts them. Please notify us of inappropriate comments.
But the "greater than sign" IS an API
Authored by: celtic_hackr on Sunday, April 29 2012 @ 01:11 AM EDT
Yes, the ">" is certainly an operator, and certainly a part of the
language, and we think of APIs as things we add in that do simple to complex
things. Like a function to calculate the square root of a number. But
"sqrt" is built into FORTRAN. I'm sure lots of math things in the java
math API are part of the FORTRAN "language", and not a separate API.
So, one language's API is another's language, but in the end it's all really
API, because no CPU understands anything we write. It is all translated for them
by an interface.

But you made my point for me with the ">" operator. It ceased being
an operator long ago, ever looked at the implementation of the ">"
operator these days? It's not just a math operator anymore. It's a math
operator, and a string comparison function, as there is no such math concept
called a string operator. It's a super short API name to call a comparison
function between two values of almost anything. I used to have a string
comparison function in my API collection, before they overloaded the
">" sign, long, long ago in a Universe not far away.

We have tons of terminology we use to hide and mask layers upon layers of
things, but in the final unvarnished analysis, it's mostly all artificial lines
we've drawn around reality.

I'm only reducing it to the absolute base absurdity, which if this case flies
we'll see ever widening scope until my version given here becomes the legal
reality version and the software industry in the US is destroyed. You know if
this flies lawyers will smash these walls down with bulldozers, until no part of
a language is left free, and all reduced to protectable copyright requiring
payment and the FOSS community will have to design a new FOSS chip and a new
FOSS language and make them public domain, so it's legal to write code without
paying every player from Intel to the Australian Software Trolls authority.

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

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