Big-endian is better than little-endian 2024-04-29T02:30:48.053Z

Comment by Menotim on Big-endian is better than little-endian · 2024-04-29T16:10:13.066Z · LW · GW

I had the same confusion when I first heard those names. It's called little-endian because "you start with the little end", and the term comes from an analogy to Gulliver

Comment by Menotim on Big-endian is better than little-endian · 2024-04-29T12:59:53.564Z · LW · GW

You're mixing up big-endian and little-endian. Big-endian is the notation used in English: twelve is 12 in big-endian and 21 in little-endian. But yes, 123.456 in big-endian would be 654.321 and with a decimal point, you couldn't parse little-endian numbers in the way described by lsusr.

Comment by Menotim on Big-endian is better than little-endian · 2024-04-29T11:04:17.063Z · LW · GW

Katapayadi does seem to be little endian, but the examples I found on Wikipedia of old Indian numerals and their predecessor, Brahmi numerals, seem to be big-endian.