3 ms·
Somehow this is connected to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29367649 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29367649 I had never thought of this until that
by glandium 5y ago
Somehow this is connected to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29367649 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29367649
I had never thought of this until that thread, but our writing of numbers comes from Arabic, and Arabic is written from right to left. And from our western perspective numbers in Arabic being written left to right is backwards. But in fact, it's us who are backwards: Arabic is written from right to left, and numbers too... from the least significant to the most significant. But we took the numbers from Arabic and kept their left-to-right order and now write them from MSD to LSD...
- mmastrac 5y agoMost significant digit first probably makes the most sense because you can immediately skip past the number after you identify the magnitude (the number of digits can be seen in the periphery of your vision without being read).
- masklinn 5y ago> But we took the numbers from Arabic and kept their left-to-right order and now write them from MSD to LSD... roman numbers were already “big endian”, though.
- ttybird 5y ago"but our writing of numbers comes from Arabic" Not India?
- ncmncm 5y agoYes, India. Where they were writing left to right. So the Persians picked them up and put them in their right-to-left text, so little-endian for them, and then Europeans picked them up from the Persians, all as-is. Little-endian would make typesetting columns of figures simpler, but that ship sailed long ago.
- schuyler2d 5y agoMy understanding is that in Arabic numbers were also left-to-right which facilitated a left column left-aligned with values and then a right column that with a right-margin with the descriptions. Thus both columns were aligned (for easy scanning and summing) and extra space was in the middle of the page.