Comment by whartung
4 days ago
The reason 'i' was the first letter available was because by default identifiers starting with, I think, I-N were integers instead of float.
When I first started, with BASIC, my variable of choice was T simply because it was easy to type NEXT T in the FOR loops (why not R? I dunno...T just stuck).
Other way around. I–N were integers rather than float because mathematics convention uses i, j, … as indices and n, m as sizes or counts.
The joke "God is Real (unless declared integer)" is definitely fortran-specific, though :-)
I am the creator of fortran-j, in which god is imaginary.