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Boolean Logic : George Boole's The Laws of Thought

Posted by michael on from the 1010001000110000111 dept.

Ian writes "The Globe and Mail has a piece about the man behind Boolean Logic - George Boole - The Isaac Newton of logic. 'It was 150 years ago that George Boole published his classic The Laws of Thought, in which he outlined concepts that form the underpinnings of the modern high-speed computer.'"

2 of 254 comments (clear)

  1. Boole Was Ada's Teacher by amigoro · · Score: 5, Interesting
    George Boole was one of the teachers of Ada Lovelace the first computer programmer. Some people don't agree that Ada was the first computer programmer. Some people also don't think that Charles Babbage's Analytical Engine was the world's first computer.

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  2. Null ruined it all by Tablizer · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Some complain that the intruduction of "null" into some systems (such as databases) ruins the simplicity of Boolean logic. It creates a "3-value logic" which can get messy to grok.

    I generally agree. I think nulls are perhaps fine for numeric calculations in some cases, such as the average if there are zero records, but not Booleans and not strings. But sometimes it is hard to limit it to one but not the other. It is a controversial topic nevertheless. Chris Date has written some white papers on how to get rid of null.

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