4 ms·
The natural endianness is "little endian", as it was originally devised in India. We just do it backwards (big endian) in left-to-right writing systems due to i
by kstenerud 5y ago
The natural endianness is "little endian", as it was originally devised in India. We just do it backwards (big endian) in left-to-right writing systems due to inertia (though originally for backwards compatibility with existing mathematical texts in the 10th century).
Little endian has too many advantages to be ignored, which is why all popular architectures and also newer protocols are now little endian.
I did a write-up about it here: https://www.technicalsourcery.net/posts/on-endianness/ https://www.technicalsourcery.net/posts/on-endianness/
- astrange 5y agoShouldn't your discussion on "natural order" consider the order numbers are spoken in? Which is mostly big endian.
- kstenerud 5y agoYes, but that is also a cultural artifact. German, for instance, still contains vestiges of the little endian spoken order, even though their adopted writing system is left-to-right and their adopted written numbering system big endian.