Post AwPmk5U6ICwhq54se8 by AlgoCompSynth@mastodon.social
(DIR) More posts by AlgoCompSynth@mastodon.social
(DIR) Post #AwPf6vKtOKdtOJ9IR6 by reverseics@infosec.exchange
2025-07-23T00:27:39Z
3 likes, 2 repeats
Big Endian was invented because someone really needed to know, right away, whether a number was positive or negative.Little Endian was invented because someone really needed to know, right away, whether a number was even or odd.This is how I'm going to explain "why is endianness a thing" to people that are new to binary stuff from now on.
(DIR) Post #AwPfbL5sBnFxxscvrs by lanodan@queer.hacktivis.me
2025-07-23T03:58:26.918179Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@reverseics Which reminds me that I often feel like Big Endian makes the most sense…
(DIR) Post #AwPmSuxiA4pMHVjzRQ by tomjennings@tldr.nettime.org
2025-07-23T05:15:27Z
0 likes, 1 repeats
@reverseics Oh young ones, read and become edumacated. https://www.rfc-editor.org/ien/ien137.txt
(DIR) Post #AwPmk2n8IzO5UExXOa by AlgoCompSynth@mastodon.social
2025-07-23T01:40:47Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@reverseics I don't think little-endian was even a thing until Intel started shipping little-endian microprocessors by the billions.
(DIR) Post #AwPmk4LYWUW6JI4Xgm by overeducatedredneck@bitbang.social
2025-07-23T02:39:46Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@AlgoCompSynth @reverseics The PDP-11 is (mostly) little endian, and pre-dates all of Intel's processors. Intel's endianness comes from the Datapoint 2200, which was bit serial, and the carry circuitry is simpler if you do things little-endian.Honestly, I think the real answer is that big endian is easier to diagram if you come from a culture with a left-to-right writing system and a habit of putting zero on the left on graph axis.(I like little endian systems)
(DIR) Post #AwPmk5U6ICwhq54se8 by AlgoCompSynth@mastodon.social
2025-07-23T03:25:18Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@overeducatedredneck Yeah, bit-serial makes sense little-endian. Rumor has it that Turing wrote binary numbers with the least significant bit on the left because that's how they showed up on an oscilloscope trace on serial computers.
(DIR) Post #AwPmk6YOJjyL9g5oyO by tomjennings@tldr.nettime.org
2025-07-23T05:18:30Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@AlgoCompSynthArithmetic begins at the lsb, and proceeds leftwards (sic), propagating carry. Computation is always physical. @overeducatedredneck
(DIR) Post #AwPmk9Jy1pDVjoMqPI by overeducatedredneck@bitbang.social
2025-07-23T02:40:34Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@AlgoCompSynth @reverseics TBH, I'm probably just going to crib Reid's explanation just to shut down discussions.
(DIR) Post #AwPtCX1A7MA346ULWy by novenary@akko.wtf
2025-07-23T06:24:48.355270Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
endianness was invented by Big Endian to sell more byte orders
(DIR) Post #AwPx8AnfBF5GogLrjE by koakuma@uwu.social
2025-07-23T07:10:57Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@novenary Is modern Hebrew little endian (in writing at least) :cirnothinking:
(DIR) Post #AwVK0FQBNs3ZZJMHDs by marshray@infosec.exchange
2025-07-25T21:24:46Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@tomjennings @reverseics Weird, most mathematical notation I’ve seen prefers to begin numbering indices starting with 1.
(DIR) Post #AwVT5ZyVIDvcLk1qfA by tomjennings@tldr.nettime.org
2025-07-25T23:06:37Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@marshrayProgrammers start with 0. That item in a list is zeroth! @reverseics
(DIR) Post #AwVdGLsh24ZNMk5Q9o by marshray@infosec.exchange
2025-07-26T01:00:34Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@tomjennings @reverseics The first element of a C-style array is accessed at index value `0`.This convention applies to many programming languages.Use of the term ’zeroth’ is exceedingly rare in programming.