Zero one infinity rule

<h2 id="authorship">Authorship</h2>
<p>Van der Poel confirmed that he was the originator of the rule, but Bruce MacLennan has also claimed authorship (in the form "The only reasonable numbers are zero, one and infinity."), writing in 2015 that:
</p>
<blockquote><p> Of course, the Zero-One-Infinity Principle was intended as a design principle for programming languages, and similar things, in order to keep them cognitively manageable. I formulated it in the early 70s, when I was working on programming language design and annoyed by all the arbitrary numbers that appeared in some of the languages of the day. I certainly have no argument against estimates, limits, or numbers in general! As you said, the problem is with arbitrary numbers.
I don't think I used it in print before I wrote my 1983 PL book [<i>Principles of Programming Languages: Design, Evaluation, and Implementation</i>]. <a href="/facts/Richard_Hamming/plAXy9p0">Dick Hamming</a> encouraged me to organize it around principles (a la <a href="/facts/Software_Tools_Users_Group/5McLYLgq">Kernighan & Plauger</a> and <a href="/facts/The_Elements_of_Style/015lEoKG">Strunk & White</a>), and the Zero-One-Infinity Principle was one of the first. (FWIW, the name “Zero-One-Infinity Principle” was inspired by <a href="/facts/George_Gamow/n79Pqk8R">George Gamow’s</a> book, <a href="/facts/One_Two_Three..._Infinity/HBQj5I1j">“One, Two, Three… Infinity,”</a> which I read in grade school.)<a class="footnote-ref" id="fnref:3" href="#fn:3"><sup>3</sup></a></p></blockquote>
<h2 id="see-also">See also</h2>
<ul><li><a href="/facts/Magic_number_(programming)/Xg7mVI7V">Magic number (programming)#Unnamed numerical constants</a></li></ul>

<h2 id="references">References</h2>

<ol>
<li id="fn:1"><p>"Willem Louis Van Der Poel". Retrieved 2023-08-25. <a href="http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?WillemLouisVanDerPoel" target="_blank">http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?WillemLouisVanDerPoel</a> <a href="#fnref:1" class="footnote-back-ref">↩</a></p></li>
<li id="fn:2"><p>"Zero-One-Infinity Rule". Jargon File. <a href="http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/Z/Zero-One-Infinity-Rule.html" target="_blank">http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/Z/Zero-One-Infinity-Rule.html</a> <a href="#fnref:2" class="footnote-back-ref">↩</a></p></li>
<li id="fn:3"><p>"The Zero, One, Infinity Disease". Retrieved 2019-06-30. <a href="https://brooker.co.za/blog/2015/04/11/zero-one.html" target="_blank">https://brooker.co.za/blog/2015/04/11/zero-one.html</a> <a href="#fnref:3" class="footnote-back-ref">↩</a></p></li>
</ol>

Zero one infinity rule open-in-new

Zero one infinity rule