4 ms·
I appreciate seeing the history of keyboard evolution, and I can see those points as being valid. However, it cannot be overlooked that the simple fact is peopl
by orev 6y ago
I appreciate seeing the history of keyboard evolution, and I can see those points as being valid. However, it cannot be overlooked that the simple fact is people start counting with the number “1”, so it’s perfectly reasonable that that’s why the first digit is “1” (and why zero-indexed arrays cause so many off by one errors). And the 0 at the end is the logical place for 0 as a stand-in for “10”, since in normal counting you wouldn’t need a 0 until you go past 9, onward to 10.
I appreciate that things like Benford’s law exist, but I don’t really buy into the idea that people put that much thought into it, when the more obvious answer is simply: “the first number is 1”.
QWERTY wasn’t designed because of some deep academic analysis of typing patterns — it was just to spread out frequently used letters so the mechanical arms didn’t get jammed.
It’s nice to think that all the standards we have today are a result of some deep thought, A/B testing, and a full committee review and approval of the design, but in reality it’s most often just what happened to work “well enough” at the time (evolution instead of intelligent design).
- scrollaway 6y ago> when the more obvious answer is simply: “the first number is 1”. This doesn't really hold if you see that 0 was to the right of 9 when the first number was 2, not 1.
- Ansil849 6y ago> since in normal counting you wouldn’t need a 0 until you go past 9, onward to 10. You absolutely could need a 0 before you got to 10. 1.01, etc. Unless you're saying decimals aren't "normal".
- heinrich5991 6y agoCounting is usually done with natural numbers: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Counting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Counting.
- Ansil849 6y agoThe Wikipedia link does not back-up your claim in the slightest. On the contrary, it states: > The traditional way of counting consists of continually increasing a (mental or spoken) counter by a unit for every element of the set
- hulitu 6y agoWikipedia is known for many things but not for its wisdom. Counting is counting things. For example sheeps. You don't have 0 sheeps. Either you have 1 or 2 or 3 or you don't have any. If there are software engineers, things change because they treat 0 as an element of the list and 0 is the first in the list 1 the 2nd, etc.
- Ansil849 6y ago> Wikipedia is known for many things but not for its wisdom. I was not the one who posted a Wikipedia link. I was only responding to the fact that the Wikipedia link did not support the prior poster's claim. > Counting is counting things. For example sheeps. You don't have 0 sheeps. Either you have 1 or 2 or 3 or you don't have any. Not having any sheep is literally having 0 sheep.
- BugsJustFindMe 6y ago> Not having any sheep is literally having 0 sheep. Only if you ignore the difference between having and not having.
- gumby 6y agoPeople typically start counting with 1 which is why this is the first year of the second decade this century, and 2001 was the first year of the current millennium, etc. USA buildings start with 1 (or first) floor being on the ground. Age in most countries starts with 0 but not all. Still, I think one-based is best considered “normal”
- Ansil849 6y agoIt is downright bizarre to me at how people are continuing to claim that 'normal counting' does not require a 0 until you go past 9. If users here genuinely believe that, then I trust if I sell you a product for £1.01, you will give me £2? 0s are fundamentally used in normal counting.
- d1sxeyes 6y agoBut people don't generally count in decimals, they'd count out one pound and one penny. So you'd count out 1 pound and 1p, 1 pound and 2p... 1 pound and 9p, 1 pound and 10p - so you don't need the zero until 10.
- Ansil849 6y agoBut you're just proving my point: you get to 1 pound and 10p before you get to 2 pounds. So you get to a zero, 1.10, before you reach 2. That's the point of decimals that I am not understanding why people are ignoring.
- scrollaway 6y agoThen you are counting pennies not pounds, so you're still starting at 1. In other words, you start mentally counting from your smallest unit of precision in use. This is a fun thought exercise, but what a pointlessly pedantic tangent this thread took…
- d1sxeyes 6y agoAbsolutely, but then, the thread itself is a bit pointless, and pedantry is a pastime on HN :) I agree, in practical terms you're counting two things - pennies and pounds. You need a zero for the pennies counter before you need a two for the pounds counter for sure. But you don't count 'I have one hundredth of a pound, I have one fiftieth of a pound, I have three hundredths of a pound, I have a twenty-fifth of a pound' and so on.
- rgoulter 6y ago> QWERTY wasn’t designed because of some deep academic analysis of typing patterns — it was just to spread out frequently used letters so the mechanical arms didn’t get jammed. This is the popular understanding. I've seen arguments against this claim. (e.g. "er" are frequent in english, and adjacent in qwerty). https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/fact-of-fiction-the-legend-of-the-qwerty-keyboard-49863249/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/fact-of-fiction-...
- tinus_hn 6y agoThis strangely overlooks the emergence of the French standard AZERTY keyboard (and other variations).