"Independently invented" would be about right for what xriso has done. The idea behind while (i--) is called "decrement and test", and it's just about as old as computing. The
PDP or the
VAX had SOB (Subtract One and conditionally Branch);
x86 has LOOP and the super-tight REP. Other architectures, I'm sure, have their own implementations of the concept.
Looking further back, Babbage's plans for the analytical engine clearly included the idea of decrement-and-test loops for repetition (as in exponentiation), and a theoretical computer called the register machine is interesting because it's known to be Turing complete; the register machine has for "hardware" a fixed number of registers holding natural numbers, and its programs are based around only two operations: "increment" and "decrement and test". A register machine with only two registers can compute any computable result. It might take a horribly long time to do it, though.