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Is that forwards first or backwards first? (Re: unintuitive for-loop behavior)

Michael Torrie torriem at gmail.com
Mon Oct 3 14:48:50 EDT 2016 
On 10/03/2016 11:57 AM, sohcahtoa82 at gmail.com wrote:
> Surprisingly, despite driving that previous car for 13 years, the switch was incredibly easy.  I've never accidentally gone to sixth gear instead of reverse, or forgotten to shift into sixth on the highway.  Also, accidentally going into first when I want to reverse has never happened.  I was actually pretty surprised.  I thought I'd mess it up constantly for the first couple months.

I drive a lot of trucks with different patterns.  One is the traditional
one with reverse to the right and back.  Several use left and up for
reverse (first or low is left and down). Never had bothered me and I
rarely select reverse when I want forward or vice versa.  In fact all it
takes to determine which pattern I have without looking is to see which
side of the H has the spring-back on it.

What would throw me off would be left-side driving where the pattern is
the same but the stick is on the left hand side of me and the pattern
works its way towards me instead of away.

There is that old, but false, saying that the only intuitive interface
is the nipple.  Turns out everything, even that, is learned, and humans
are pretty adaptable, even to non-obvious and non-intuitive things such
as how python's loops work, lambdas, comprehensions, etc.  Anyone ever
driven a 5 and 4 transmission? :)
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