[MUD-Dev] Re: let's call it a spellcraft

[Jon A. Lambert]

On 23 Sep 98, Adam J. Thornton wrote:
> On Tue, Sep 22, 1998 at 10:13:04PM -0500, Vadim Tkachenko wrote:
> > Again, why limit yourself with numbers like 50? Why not 500? Why not
> > just X?
> 
> There's a great maxim from somewhere that I can't remember: there
> are only three interesting numbers: zero, one, and
> infinity-defined-as-the-largest- number-your-machine-can-deal-with. 
> I've found it's usually a good maxim to apply: either you can't have
> something, you can have one of it, or I'll try to allocate space for
> it for you and let you know if I can't.

I remember some time back Vadim throttled me for my arbitrary use of 
numbers in several posts.  ;)

This is an excellent design point, which you expand on.  The current 
state of publicly available mud codebases is very illustrative of 
the "numeric limitations" mindset.   I would venture that many of the 
casual modifiers of these codebases spend a great deal of time in 
extending and circumventing these often arbitrary design decisions.

I agree,  we should always attempt an implementation  in terms 0, 1 
and many(unknown/infinity/X).  There are exceptions and instances 
where we must pay homage at some level to the failings of our 
silicon, but these should be rare and abstracted if possible.   

It begs the question, "Is the fixed dimensional array evil?"

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