2 ms·
Kids that dismiss Lisp without even grasping the amazing power behind it, remind me the story of Yanomami languages of Amazonian tribes. Apparently, there's wor
by iLemming 2y ago
Kids that dismiss Lisp without even grasping the amazing power behind it, remind me the story of Yanomami languages of Amazonian tribes. Apparently, there's word for 'one' and for 'two', but there's no word for 'three', in their language, only a generic word that basically means 'a lot'.
Now imagine trying to explain to them the concept of subtracting a hundred from a billion and the most straightforward way to deal with that is a decimal numbering system. I think they'd kill you for blackmagicfuckery on the spot.
Well, if that comparison feels condescending, let's imagine ancient Romans - with all their sophisticated culture, economy and traditions. They wouldn't kill you, but still the idea of a number such a billion would probably terrify them. They'd probably be like: "dear sapientissime señore, we respect your wisdom, but we rather use... Lua"
- anthk 2y agoRomans knew about thousand based multipliers with a mark over the letter.
- iLemming 2y agoOkay, please share your wisdom, tell me how would they express "1,000,000,000 - 100" using Latin numerals? Oh, I found the answer on my own, with the help of LLM. For a billion you can use M̅M̅, which technically would mean a thousand thousand thousands, and to denote the calculation above you'd write - M̅M̅CM. But my point still remains relevant - this is the modern extended version of Roman numerals. In ancient Rome they typically never would go up to a billion.