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October 18, 2002

'1'+'2'

Sam Ruby asks a good question in Dealing with Diversity: what's '1'+'2'? A great story; provocative, too.

Even the really base datatypes are so hard. Strings, I talked about a while ago. Dates? (I clearly remember an erudite three-page essay in "misc/time.h" many years ago). Numbers: don't even get me started on numbers.

Then the kids come along and spoil things. Dylan started playing with Python. What happens if I write "abc" * 5, he asks. Well, son, that's.... (eek! abcabcabcabcabc I was not expecting.)

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