Re: Integral types and own type definitions (was Re: Suggested method for returning a string from a C program?)

James Kuyper <jameskuyper@alumni.caltech.edu> writes:

On 3/26/25 05:59, Keith Thompson wrote:

David Brown <david.brown@hesbynett.no> writes:
[...]

Sure. But most people have forgotten such details long ago - negative
numbers are not part of daily life (except as an indicator of how much
you owe the bank...). After all, negative numbers are not natural!

>
Most people understand credits and debits.

 From my experience, most do not. In particular, if you gave them
examples of a transaction and the relevant accounts, they would have no
idea which accounts should be debited, and which should be credited.

 Sure, most people don't understand double-entry bookkeepping.  I was
thinking of simpler concepts.  Depositing money increases your bank
account balance, withdrawing money decreases it, withdrawing too
much can result in a negative balance, and so on.  A checking account
or credit card statement shows numbers with or without a "-" symbol.
 Most of us here are probably in the top 10% of the general population
in terms of mathematical knowledge, and it can be difficult to know
how much knowledge most people have.  But I think that most people
have a decent basic understanding of positive and negative numbers.
As I mentioned recently, temperatures might have been a better
example.
 And this is *way* off-topic.