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submitted 2 months ago by ekZepp@lemmy.world to c/programmer_humor@programming.dev

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[-] MadMadBunny@lemmy.ca 65 points 2 months ago

Please,

[-] threeonefour@piefed.ca 24 points 2 months ago

I always see those videos where people give kids a walkman or a rotary phone and ask them to figure out what it is or how it works. I'm imagining some medieval merchant handing me an abacus and laughing because I can't figure it out.

[-] tetris11@lemmy.ml 16 points 2 months ago

It's little endian, so the beads on the far right are used to outnumber the big endian beads at the top on the woke left. After several computations, the middle section is just gone

[-] TheRedSpade@lemmy.world 6 points 2 months ago

Tried reading about endianness once. Pretty sure it can't be dumbed down enough for my brain.

[-] zerofk@lemmy.zip 16 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

You know how some languages write left-to-right, and some rught-to-left? Endianness is that, for numbers.

Or another analogy is dates: 2025/12/31 is big endian, 31/12/2025 is little endian. And 12/31/2025 is middle endian. Which makes no sense at all because the middle is, by definition, not an end.

[-] TheRedSpade@lemmy.world 8 points 2 months ago

I stand corrected. No idea what I was reading (several years ago), but whatever it was made it seem way more complicated. Maybe it was just an explanation from somebody who didn't know.

[-] wheezy@lemmy.ml 4 points 2 months ago

Likely it was being explained in the context of binary number representation as it is primarily important in computer architecture. If you're not already familiar with that then it was probably confusing explained in that context.

[-] tetris11@lemmy.ml 13 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

Big Endian    Little Endian:
 
 "1010"         "1010"
  ||||           ||||
 [1248]         [8421]
 
 1+4=5          8+2=10

Depending on whether the order of binary comes from the left (Big Endian) or from the right (Little Endian), the binary number of "1010" can equal 5 or 10

[-] pinball_wizard@lemmy.zip 5 points 2 months ago

Ouch. I had to learn endianness once to solve a real life serialization bug. It sucked. I learned it for just long enough to correct the code for the corner cases involves, and then slept and forgot everything about it.

[-] psud@aussie.zone 1 points 2 months ago

Hint: each bar has five beads, with a 2 bead multiplier above

[-] fubarx@lemmy.world 13 points 2 months ago

Young whippersnappers.

[-] oatscoop@midwest.social 14 points 2 months ago

You kids don't know how good you have it!

[-] MeatPilot@lemmy.world 6 points 2 months ago

At least you have hands! I had to get my fabricated from the town blacksmith.

[-] hakunawazo@lemmy.world 4 points 2 months ago

[-] CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org 2 points 2 months ago

Ooh ooh ooh?

[-] CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org 5 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

Fun fact, the Romans would never have labeled their abacuses like this. It would have made calculating very difficult; they effectively worked with modern numbers in bead form, and then used the famous numeral system just to record the results.