Comment by FPGAhacker
8 years ago
Programmers got it from mathematicians. I had the impression it was a fairly long standing use of the word.
8 years ago
Programmers got it from mathematicians. I had the impression it was a fairly long standing use of the word.
Mathematicians got it directly from cartography. A “map” “maps” points from one set of coordinates to another, for example when you want to plot latitude and longitude on a flat paper.
I expect ideas of mapping functions are only a couple of hundred years old at most, and really quite obscure to most people who are just familiar with the concept of 'maps' and 'mapping' things 'out'.
In functional programming I understand map as just a clone and convert operation. I noticed C++ has a 'map' data structure which is most suitable for associating references. A C++ map is not suitable for storing positions in space.