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>[big endian] Binary dumps look more in line with how humans with left-to-right scripts expect to read numbers. Maybe I'm just dumb, but surely the actual lang

>[big endian] Binary dumps look more in line with how humans with left-to-right scripts expect to read numbers. Maybe I'm just dumb, but surely the actual language order is entirely irrelevant? If hypothetically we wrote in English right-to-left instead, then we'd write our numbers right-to-left, and our memory dumps right-to-left, so then we'd find that little-endian caused the data to start with the smallest byte first (on the right). Mirroring the language doesn't undo a mirroring within the language, and that's what little-endian is, so a more accurate statement would be: >Binary dumps look more in line with how humans with single-direction scripts expect to read numbers.

cies 5y ago
> If hypothetically we wrote in English right-to-left instead, then we'd write our numbers right-to-left If you read the article the author shows you that in RTL langs (where our current number system originated from) the numbers were also RTL. We just stuck to the convention. Interesting how this little bit of RTL snuck into Europes otherwise LTR languages to the extend that when i type a number in a spreadsheet it changes the allignment to with this... Interesting/insightful article!
- thaumasiotes 5y ago
  > If you read the article the author shows you that in RTL langs (where our current number system originated from) the numbers were also RTL. We just stuck to the convention. Well, no, the author says this: > Our modern numbering system has its roots in the Hindu numbering system, which was invented somewhere between the 1st and 4th century. Like the dominant writing system of the time, numbers were written right-to-left This is not obvious - it appears that there was a right-to-left Indic script centered around Pakistan ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kharosthi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kharosthi ) and a left-to-right one ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brahmi_script https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brahmi_script ) farther south / east. Before that, Sanskrit was written from left to right. It seems far more likely to me in any event that the order in which numbers are written, when the system is innovated, will reflect the order in which they are spoken in whatever language, not directly the order in which the language is written down. Over time they will always develop a big-endian order, because that allows sorting them.

cies 5y ago

> If hypothetically we wrote in English right-to-left instead, then we'd write our numbers right-to-left If you read the article the author shows you that in RTL langs (where our current number system originated from) the numbers were also RTL. We just stuck to the convention. Interesting how this little bit of RTL snuck into Europes otherwise LTR languages to the extend that when i type a number in a spreadsheet it changes the allignment to with this... Interesting/insightful article!

thaumasiotes 5y ago
> If you read the article the author shows you that in RTL langs (where our current number system originated from) the numbers were also RTL. We just stuck to the convention. Well, no, the author says this: > Our modern numbering system has its roots in the Hindu numbering system, which was invented somewhere between the 1st and 4th century. Like the dominant writing system of the time, numbers were written right-to-left This is not obvious - it appears that there was a right-to-left Indic script centered around Pakistan ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kharosthi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kharosthi ) and a left-to-right one ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brahmi_script https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brahmi_script ) farther south / east. Before that, Sanskrit was written from left to right. It seems far more likely to me in any event that the order in which numbers are written, when the system is innovated, will reflect the order in which they are spoken in whatever language, not directly the order in which the language is written down. Over time they will always develop a big-endian order, because that allows sorting them.