8 ms·
Nitpick: I'm guessing you mean 10,000% and English isn't your native language. In English the period "." is a decimal separator, not a thousands separator, so 1
by pluma 9y ago
Nitpick: I'm guessing you mean 10,000% and English isn't your native language. In English the period "." is a decimal separator, not a thousands separator, so 10.000% means 10%.
EDIT: Holy cow, at least four downvotes so far. I hope the downvotes are for nitpicking and not out of disagreement. As cakemuncher seems to disagree (which doesn't mean they downvoted) this seems like a great learning opportunity about decimal separators and non-native speakers:
The parent is most likely German (the example code uses German so that usually means Germany, Austria or Switzerland) which uses the comma as decimal separator and period as thousands separator. I'm German too, so I'm sensitized to this mistake.
Here's the Wikipedia article for reference: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decimal_mark https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decimal_mark
The US, the UK, New Zealand, Australia and English-speaking Canada all use the dot as decimal mark. South Africa is the only major English speaking country using a comma instead, but they use a space as thousands separator rather than a period.
The parent clearly intended "10.000%" to be read as "ten thousand percent" so that leaves the following list of countries which according to Wikipedia use a comma as thousands separator:
Argentina, Austria, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Brazil, Chile, Croatia, Denmark, Germany, Greece, Indonesia, Italy, Netherlands (currency), Portugal, Romania, Russia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden (not recommended), Turkey
Exactly zero of these countries are predominantly English speaking. So in other words, in English 10.000% means ten percent (with a precision of three digits after the decimal point), not ten thousand percent.
- cakemuncher 9y agoThat depends on which English speaking country you're from.
- chii 9y agoI know of no English speaking country that uses the comma this way. But plenty of non English speaking country does it.
- Cakez0r 9y agoEngland uses the comma this way. I.E. would format it 10,000%.
- pluma 9y agoI think you misread the thread you're responding to. The OP used a comma as decimal point, not to as a thousands separator. GP likely meant they know of no English speaking country that uses the comma as decimal point. Your example doesn't contradict or add to that.
- tzs 9y agoThis issue can be avoided by following the ISO standards ISO-31 and ISO-80000-1. Under these grouping is done by separating groups by a small space (U+2009, THIN SPACE, is usually used, I believe). If there is a period or comma in the number, it is then unambiguously the decimal separator. We should even already be used to that style, because those are the standards that cover how SI units are supposed to be written. So just write it as 10 000% and everyone should be happy.
- tome 9y agoAh yes, I'll just press the " " key on my keyboard instead of the "," key :)
- DonHopkins 9y agoYou'll love Apple's smart new "Touch Space Bar", which lets you continuously adjust the width, style and semantics of Unicode spaces from zero width, hair thin, various EM&ENs, to obesely fat, pregnant pause, breaking, non-breaking, numeric, oghamic, figure, ideographic, word, punctuation, visible, ␠ symbols, mathematical, poetic, scientific, pseudo-scientific, streaming, auto-repeat, lossless and lossy compression, deep, personal, safe, digital rights management, Mongolian vowel separators [1], etc, simply by swiping, tapping, crossing and snapping your fingers, while watching the mesmerizing colorful blinking graphical feedback provided by applications supporting the NSTouchSpaceBar API. Microsoft also has a dog in the space race: see their "Space Characters Design Standards". [2] [1] https://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/chars/spaces.html https://www.cs.tut.fi/~jkorpela/chars/spaces.html [2] https://www.microsoft.com/typography/developers/fdsspec/spaces.htm https://www.microsoft.com/typography/developers/fdsspec/spac...
- tome 9y agoThis is the best comment I've read all day, and I've been reading some good ones about The Google Memo™. EDIT: Do yourself a favour and read DonHopkins's history. You'll have a good laugh. EDIT2: That edit wasn't meant for you, Don.
- 9y ago
- edem 9y agoMine was for the nitpick. I can't help myself, sorry I just hate it.
- lopatin 9y agoDidn't downvote or anything, but come on .. we all know what he meant. This thread is not the place for a "a great learning opportunity about decimal separators and non-native speakers".
- esolyt 9y ago> We all know what he meant Having your mistake corrected can be educational even when you were understood. In the future, inanother context, the same mistake could result in confusion.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- cel1ne 9y agoOP here. I agree.
- pc86 9y agoWell since we're all being pedantic, OP means "Original Poster" which is the person who started the thread (page, not this particular thread, which you did start).
- lopatin 9y agoI think that the meaning of OP depends on context. In general, you're correct. But cel1ne can be reasonably be referred to as the OP in our convo, since our discussion really doesn't have anything to do with the content submitted by the Original Poster of the whole page.
- pluma 9y agoIt's also a lazy way to avoid counting the exact depth level and adjusting the word "GP" accordingly.
- StevePerkins 9y agoI'm always tempted to downvote people who edit their comments, complaining about downvotes or demanding explanations. You'll see this behavior occasionally on any "gamified" discussion forum. But HN culture is the most extreme about this, you see it in every other thread. * People downvote grammar-nitpicks, and "Actuallllly..."-style smarmy corrections that are more about making the speaker feel superior than genuinely helping the recipient. * They downvote criticisms of programming languages that are currently popular here. * They downvote libertarian political views in threads where the liberals are dominant, and then paradoxically they downvote liberal views in the next thread where the libertarians are dominating. Human nature just like a winner. * They downvote low-quality additions such as, "This!". * They will almost certainly downvote this comment, because it's negative in tone and speaks to HN culture, which generally doesn't go over well. Gamification of conversation can be harmful to your mental well-being. None of these "imaginary Internet points" mean anything. Try not to troll. Otherwise, just speak your truth and take any downvotes like an adult.
- kneedeepclunge 9y agodownvoted. You just went into a useless rant about liberals and libertarians which was not relevant to the actual discussion.
- jameskegel 9y agoYour name is green, which means you are brand new and can't downvote
- jameskegel 9y agoI'd downvote this comment if I could because it exemplifies everything it is against.
- striking 9y agoYou can now :)
- 9y ago
- hacker_9 9y agoWhat an incredibly pointless edit.
- danellis 9y agoIn English we say "commaless".
- DonHopkins 9y agoWhen I read 10.000%, I though he was being reasonably realistic about the magnitude of his increase in productivity (a 10% increase is great, nothing to scoff at), but wildly exaggerating about the precision by which he measured his productivity, to three significant figures! But if you're German, isn't that the kind of hyperbole you most appreciate, since you love making precise measurements, no matter their magnitude? ;)
- kbenson 9y ago> Exactly zero of these countries are predominantly English speaking. So in other words, in English 10.000% means ten percent (with a precision of three digits after the decimal point), not ten thousand percent. I posed a question about this a week or so ago,and got some interesting responses.[1] This one might be illuminating: In mainland Europe we only use the metric system, even when speaking or writing English. Also it is common to stick to the comma as decimal separator and dot as thousands separator when writing English. This convention is independent of the language used. Same goes for date notation, dd-mm-yyyy is used (almost) always. In Windows or Linux for example you can select the English language with Dutch localisation. It's used by almost all software developers I know. So the answer is that countries that use a period as a thousands separator may by convention happen to continue doing so when using English. Whether you think this is appropriate is likely tied to whether you think localization applies irrespective to language or not. 1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14861871 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14861871
- okreallywtf 9y agoI think its fine to point it out for clarification, its not really a nitpick though because it is correct within his context.
- odammit 9y agoThis is why I love HN. JK. Jajajajajajajajaja
- sctb 9y agoWe detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14966858 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14966858 and marked it off-topic.