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in reply to Re: 0 illegal modulus?
in thread 0 illegal modulus?

(On reading a book to understand a simple principle)

You obviously don't get it. You can't expect someone who uses the % operator to have read a book on number theory first. Therefore it should behave intuitively and comply with what the commonly accepted understanding of the term is, so long as it is sensible and consistent. I think I have demonstrated in other posts that a modulus of 0 is neither sensible nor consistent, except with one contrived definition of modulus which I still think is bogus.

You say a modulus is defined one way; I say another. Who is to say who is right, or whether being "right" means anything? Let's end this rant and agree to disagree.

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Re: Re: Re: 0 illegal modulus?
by jepri (Parson) on Jun 20, 2001 at 17:50 UTC
    This is all so terribly familiar. I grew up programming (literally). Calculus at school was easy for me, because while the class was trying to understand what a function was, I was writing recursive ones. Simple simple simple. I taught myself math above my level so I could do tricks with my computer. I'm not boasting. The young monks here would have outshone me, but I was ahead of my classmates.

    Math was so easy. But looking back every so often someone would point out something that didn't quite fit, I would call them stupid and sneer at them (like you have repeatedly in this thread) and they would go away.

    It wasn't until I was taking advanced math at uni that I finally had it made completely clear to me what a twat I was being. The work was easy, except the lecturer kept focussing on stupid exceptions, like asymptotes, dividing functions in stupid situations, etc. The penny finally dropped that the real game was working with those exceptions, not the easy, 'intuitive' stuff.

    Your educators have not been completely forthcoming. Pretty much everything you are told is a gross over-simplification or half-truth. The more honest amoung them will tell you that you get the lite version.

    It would be possible for you to spend your whole life not understanding things better by belittling and attacking anyone who disagrees with you. This would be a shame, because it seems you are the kind of person who would get a kick out of the tougher stuff. Group theory might not be the best place to start, but it is relevent to many programs and techniques, so you would quickly begin to see it all over the place.

    I would encourage you to start looking at things a bit more closely, with the thought in mind 'Why do people care so much about this?'. Often there's a reason, it's just hard to understand when you come at it from a different angle to most people who use it. Feel free to ask questions that are a bit 'off-topic', there's an amazing body of knowledge here.

    ____________________
    Jeremy
    I didn't believe in evil until I dated it.