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Back when the Spanish had driven the Moors south monks were picking over the wonderful libraries they had left behind, one of the treasures they discovered was
by Taniwha 5y ago
Back when the Spanish had driven the Moors south monks were picking over the wonderful libraries they had left behind, one of the treasures they discovered was what we now call arabic numbers - but they screwed up, they took the numbers as they saw them whole into their writing system. They took numbers meant to be written in a right to left writing system into a left to right system without reversing them.
Writing numbers smallest digits first is particularly useful in business - when you add numbers together the result can be written in order, you don't have to guess and leave enough space for the answer to fit into.
But it's also screwed us over down the generations - it's the cause for our computers' big-endian vs. little-endian sillyness - took us a generation and we finally have decided that, well, the original arabic way of doing it was right
- pezezin 5y agoI'm no historian, but that explanation doesn't make sense to me, for two reasons: * Pre-decimal numeral systems in use at that time (Roman/Greek/whatever numerals) were already written biggest-left to smallest-right, and had been so for more than a thousand years. * Arabic numerals were invented in India, and Indian languages are written left-to-right.
- jefftk 5y agoOn the other hand, network byte order is big endian, so now we typically have a little endian devices converting to and from big endian to talk to each other.
- Taniwha 5y agoYes, we're stuck with that, at least for old protocols
- Zak 5y agoCounterpoint: when talking or skimming text, the exact number is often not especially important to most of the audience, but the most significant digit or two are. If there are 123 new covid cases in the cycling club, I'm not going to the meeting; it's not because of the 3 or the 20.
- geoduck14 5y ago>If there are 123 new covid cases in the cycling club, I'm not going to the meeting; it's not because of the 3 or the 20. Are you skipping because bicycles are SUPER popular during the pandemic and you don't want to fit into the crowd?
- nailuj 5y agoTo know the magnitude of the most significant digit, you have to scan the whole number anyways. Looking for this info at the end of the number would be just as natural if you were used to it.
- jacobolus 5y agoYes, number representation should be floating point with the magnitude written at the front.