Alice Averlong🏳️‍⚧️Apr 20, 2024
The Roman empire fell because their Roman numerals weren't a form of positional notation, so they couldn't figure out binary. Their computers were terrible.
Show threadJames Grimmelmann
@foone “One of the main causes of the fall of the Roman Empire was that, lacking zero, they had no way to indicate successful termination of their C programs." – Robert Firth
Apr 20, 2024 at 8:32pmWeb
Show threadMark T. TomczakApr 22, 2024

@jtlg @foone Yes. Hence the invention of the "triumvirate," a method for deciding if a program succeeded by running it three times; if all three runs agreed on the output, the run could be considered successful.

This was incredibly inefficient and left Rome vulnerable to sacking by the Hypervisigoths in the 5th Century.

Show threadrrbApr 22, 2024

@jtlg @foone

Nor terminate their strings.

I would assume that any printf statement would go on forever. And strcpy would have to do a buffer overflow. They would have to wait until the late 1970s for strncpy to make up for this.

Show threadJos DingjanApr 22, 2024
@foone @jtlg The Romans’ predecessor to C was XCIX.
Show threadkarmanApr 22, 2024

@happydisciple @foone @jtlg On the other hand, their successor to C had built in build&test automation.

(Oh dear, just drag me out back and put me out of my misery for this one, it’s soooo bad)