It is no more wrong to say that ∀x∈0:x∈T than it is to say that "all Leprechauns are Irish". There is no claim that ∃x∈0:x∈T ("there exists an Irish leprechaun"). The negation of my claim is that ¬∀x∈0:x∈T ("not all leprechauns are Irish") which would have to be proven by showing that ∃x∈0:x∈T ("there exists a non-Irish leprechaun"). The (minority) mathematical faction of Constructivism holds that proof by negation is invalid; the obvious falsity of the negation is insufficient to proove the proposition. There seem to be more constructivists in this thread than have ever gathered before in one place. An argument Harold already posed is relevent to address this stance: The empty set is a proper subset of every other set. If an argument references a typed set, 0 must inherit the type. If it were allowed to not be of the referenced type, it could not have been a subset of the typed set. Harold is correct is typing 0 as exclusively prime...remembering that is can also be exclusively type as non-prime in another argument on another day! Cheers! [Sorry to bump so late in the game. I was dead-set against Harold and Bob (almost angry with them for their obstinance!) for a full hour of parsing this thread before their arguments convinced me that my intuitive distaste for their proposition was wrong.]

I also workin a small group that used no source control until my arrival (and advocacy). Instead of pestering boss-man, I researched the major source-control packages and presented him a report explaining my recommendation. The other developers were neither enthusiastic nor opposed. My boss had me set up the server and clients, train the dev team, and administer the system. The increased quality of our team's output speaks volumes. Let your boss know why your proposal is valuable (sorry: I know I'm not really addressing your original question) and that you will be happy to become the in-house expert on security. You will code in parallel with the rest of the team, writing the security system at the beginning of each project while the rest of the team works on functionality. Learn all you can about the field (not just authentication and such, but buffer overruns and other security flaws). You will earn yourself mastery of a highly valued specialty and your boss will notice that you have the courage of your convictions. Good luck! Big opportunity for you!

Everybody hold on one minute and take a deep breath. True: the HoS is not for questions. So look closely at the title of this thread and the original post. Vasily did not ask a question, he told a story from long ago (C++ builder 6 came out in 2002) when he was "beginning to make some programs" and ended up hating C++. He was not asking for help, and he reasonably responded to unsolicited advice by reasserting his reasons for hating C++. You may not share or understand the bad taste the experience left in his mouth, but do not slam his competence (he was a beginner ten years ago, remember?) and drag him into a screaming match then bitch-slap him for getting frusterated. Get a GRIP. Now... I learned to program as a kid in the early 80's and was good at it until I tried to learn OOP and windows programming simultaneously without a teacher, using Borland OWL on Win3.1. With no internet. The documentation was...terse. My code was corrupting the bitmaps used for drawing the minimize/maximize/close buttons. My code crashed. Then my code crashed WINDOWS and dumped out to the command prompt. Not kidding. Bad taste in mouth. For Windows, lParam, wParam, C++, Borland, the whole mess. It was definately HoS experience. I still hate C++ on a deep emotional level that will not be mollified by any appeal to reason. Today I program command line apps in ANSI C and couldn't be happier.

Because it's as useful as metric, but for complementary purposes. Let me address metric first. Its usefulness is consistancy and mathematical utility. Every measurement has ONE base unit, which we then scale by factors of ten, right? Couldn't be simpler. Using this system in mathematical calculations is easy. So this system wins out in any endeavour of pencil-and-paper. Except it isn't applied consistantly. What appears at first to be a simple base-10 scalcing system is, by tradition, not. We use the mm, cm, m, and km. We exclude and decimeter, dekameter, and hectometer so thoroughly that we have to speak in stilited language of 600m rather than 6hm or 30cm rather then 3 dm. So the system does not live up to its billing as base-10. Instead it is an ad-hoc mix of base-1000, base-100 and base-10. But base-10 is an accident of biology. There may be considerations beyond mathematical utility in choosing units of measure. The imperial system shines in the realm of day to day life. Is it not easier to estimate the relative size of a foot to a yard than a decimeter to a meter? I find mentally estimating a tenth of a distance or weight (or whatever measurement) less accurate than estimating a third or a half of the same unit. Dividing the foot: The consideration here is divisibility. There is an elegance and a clarity of expression when we can stay in the realm of whole numbers for describing a fraction of one measure and a multiple of another. 12 inches to a foot allows the foot to be equally divided in 2, 3, 4, and 6 parts of integral inches. 1/3 foot == 4 inches. 1/2 foot == 6 inches. But 1/3 meter = 3 1/3 dm. 1/4 m == 2.5 dm. Hmm. This concept is so useful that the Babylonian base-60 still prevails when measuring time and angles. I have yet to see a protractor with a radian scale. Dividing miles and inches: We in the software field should also appreciate the imperial tradition of dividing miles and inches in binary! What could be more fundamental? We generally divide the mile into halves and quarters, but then give up and 'go decimal' for smaller divisions, but the inch is given the binary treatment through to 1/64 (beyond that we use mils). Temperature: Dividing the temperature-difference between freezing water and boiling water into 100 units is worse than dividing it into 180 units. The methematical utility of base-10 is comprimized by the choice of TWO arbitrary points. On the other hand, the F scale has nearly twice the granularity of C. I