[Edu-sig] Fwd: Which way did the chicken cross the road?

[Jason Cunliffe]

Guido van Rossum wrote:
> Interesting...  I would have guessed that a Hebrew student would draw
> an array like this:
>
>   [9] [8] [7] [6] [5] [4] [3] [2] [1] [0]
>
> i.e. use ascending indices in r-to-l order.  But apparently he drew it
> like we do, and simply reversed his notion of "first" index.  Very
> curious!  Nice quote, Jason!

Funny..

Yes math and most computer programs read from right to left, while Hebrew goes
the other way. So I suppose doing international math in Hebrew, or with Hebrew
writing habits offers at least two contrapuntal models.

Arabic is the same also isn't it? Home of algorithms ..hmmmm

And what about the vertical column oriented ones?
Japanese and Chinese used to be al vertical I think, but are they still?

leftbrain-rightbrain-inner~outer~brain

Graphic designers deal with this directional counterpoint logic too in
interesting ways:
'Text' demands that it follow the appropriate visual layout reading logic.
But it is often different from the visual flow rules adn momentum of logotypes,
images, icons and symbols.

Logo- and display types are right in the magic edge zone between readability [as
parsable symbol] and viewability [as compositional elements]. The 'distressed'
type movement of the 90's as practiced by David Carson and many others pushed
the enevlope of that. And anmaited typogtraphics, motion graphisc do too. TV
ads, Film Titles, 'Flash', Signs in the street, Web etc..  For those of us
exposed to modern media, the influential forces on our 'reading' habits are huge
and complex. Arguably, much broader than the influences and experience of our
writing habits.

Which is another extreme way if way of saying why computational literacy is so
important, and interesting, and why it makes strong modern sense to expose
everybody to it.


..Anyway Joel Neely from the Rebol list just sent me his story source:

<quote>
I think I heard Dijkstra speak of this several years ago.  It is
referenced in his book

    A Discipline of Programming
    (c) 1976, Prentice-Hall, Inc.
    Englewood Cliffs, NJ
    ISBN 0-13-215871-X

on page 116 under "The Problem of the Dutch National Flag".
</quote>


./Jason