Hi --- The arbitrary constant was made popular by Douglas Adams in the mid-1970s radio series ``A Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy'' (a trilogy in 4 parts) --- however it does have a basis in the standard model of physics --- a paper in Phys.Rev. of the early 1970s described the unification of the Electro-Weak and Strong nuclear forces --- the arbitrary constant (of nearly) 42 appears in the calculations. I forget the original paper but if you get hold of Frank Close ``The Cosmic Onion'' a graph reproduces the result. I met Douglas Adams once at a book signing and asked him how he got hold of the Phys.Rev. paper so early. Technically he should have written that ``42 is the answer to life, the universe and everything except for gravity and a few other arbitrary constants'' Adams was interested in computing --- I think his reaction to being told about functional programming was to wonder what non-functional programming might be. Phil On 1 Feb 2008, at 14:03, Loup Vaillant wrote:
I have read quite a lot of Haskell papers, lately, and noticed that the number 42 appeared quite often, in informal tutorials as well as in very serious research papers. No wonder Haskell is the Answer to The Great Question of Life, The Universe, and Everything, but I would like to know who started this, and when.
Google wasn't much help, and I can't believe it's coincidence --hence this email. I hope I didn't opened some Pandora box. :-)
Cheers, Loup _______________________________________________ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
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