Wonder why they let “Ernest” into this scheme, with two syllables when all the others have one.
Pronunciations for hexadecimal numbers (1968)
41–50 of 124 posts
Re: Pronunciations for hexadecimal numbers (1968)
#42Didn't Malcolm Gladwell talk about how the Chinese names for numbers were were closer to their place values and therefore less confusing for calculations? e.g. "50" is "five-tens" instead of "fifty"
Que?
"Fifty" is "five-tens", numerically, semantically, and etymologically.
Re: Pronunciations for hexadecimal numbers (1968)
#43In French, and more specifically French as spoken in some areas in Switzerland, there is a very natural way of pronouncing hex numbers: 1 to F are the normal 'un' to 'quinze'. A is 'dix'. 10 is 'seize'. 11 is 'seize et un' etc. Until 1F which is `seize et quinze'. 20 to 2F are 'vingt' until 'vingt et quinze'. Etc. 70, 80 and 90 are called 'septante', 'huitante' (Swiss-specific) and 'nonante'. A0 is 'dixante', then we…
> Note that 'soixante dix' is 6A, not 70.
"Soixante-dix" would be 70 no matter how you look at it, and 0x6A is obviously "cent six".
That's why you need a new suffix as well as new names for exponentials instead of trying to retrofit existing number-naming convention. (Same thing is true for English as well)
So let this new hexadecimal suffix would be -anze, 16 ^ 3 is hexmille, 16 ^ 2 is hexcents,
0xB78D = 46989 would be "onze hexmille sept hexcents huitanze treize." or "quarante six mille neuf cents quatre-vingt neuf"
Re: Pronunciations for hexadecimal numbers (1968)
#44Much less interesting but I've worked in teams where "zillion" is a shorthand for "followed by all the zeroes that fit in a word of the size we're talking about". So 8 zillion is 0x80000000 if we're talking about a 32 bit address space.
i'm stealing that
Re: Pronunciations for hexadecimal numbers (1968)
#45Much less interesting but I've worked in teams where "zillion" is a shorthand for "followed by all the zeroes that fit in a word of the size we're talking about". So 8 zillion is 0x80000000 if we're talking about a 32 bit address space.
That's weird because 3 zillion is more than 28 zillion.
Re: Pronunciations for hexadecimal numbers (1968)
#46I'll have to tell my A01C about these. And while we're talking hex semantics, is it just me being old, or do lower case letters in hex values bother anyone else? The only time I've been OK with this is when I've had to work with machines that only have seven-segment displays.
I tend to prefer lowercase since it reduces the number of confusable characters, especially in handwriting (8/B, 0/D, 4/A), but I can understand that numbers might typographically or semantically feel uppercase, so lowercase A-F creates a MIxEd cASe looK. Is uppercase the older tradition? I'm ~30yo and I've been seeing both for as long as I remember.
In my experience, it was always upper case until around the time CSS was introduced. The article pictured has it in upper case and it's from 1968.
Re: Pronunciations for hexadecimal numbers (1968)
#47Wonder why they let “Ernest” into this scheme, with two syllables when all the others have one.
Wonder why they let "Seven" into this scheme, with two syllables when all the others have one.
Re: Pronunciations for hexadecimal numbers (1968)
#48Wonder why they let “Ernest” into this scheme, with two syllables when all the others have one.
I wrote to the author of the system last night to ask him the backstory behind the names. Maybe his colleagues, friends, siblings - I hope he writes me back to tell the story!
Re: Pronunciations for hexadecimal numbers (1968)
#49Much less interesting but I've worked in teams where "zillion" is a shorthand for "followed by all the zeroes that fit in a word of the size we're talking about". So 8 zillion is 0x80000000 if we're talking about a 32 bit address space.
That's weird because 3 zillion is more than 28 zillion.
And one zillion equals ten zillions...
Re: Pronunciations for hexadecimal numbers (1968)
#50There's got to be some origin for those particular names - were they just lab partners or something? I need to know!
Last night I wrote to Robert Magnusson (the author of the 1968 article) to ask him. Hope he writes back!