Pronunciations for hexadecimal numbers (1968) • Hacker News Board

Re: Pronunciations for hexadecimal numbers (1968)

#111

Post by ummonk » Mon, Aug 26, 2019, 11:17 PM UTC

mjevans wrote: post #107

thanhhaimai wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this might be the disconnect between us. From my point of view as a non-native English speaker, the approach proposed in the tweet and that Swiss French system both requires the user to learn a new system. To me, both of that carry more drawbacks than just reading the hex character by character, in a group of 4. I can give an example using the system in the tweet: 2F3E: twenty frost thirty ernest -- longer to…

I also prefer just reading off the short version; either in sets of (up to) 4 or 2, depending on the application. For a mac address I'd not summarize and just read it off in 6 pairs. For the example representation address on the wikipedia page... 2001:0db8:85a3:0000:0000:8a2e:0370:7334 ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPv6_address ) Two Zero Zero One Colon Delta Bravo Eight Colon Eight Five Alpha Three Colon (pause) C…

You missed a colon but yeah. (I would just pronounce a single zero in between the colons instead of pausing to be extra clear)

Re: Pronunciations for hexadecimal numbers (1968)

#112

Post by michelinman » Mon, Aug 26, 2019, 11:50 PM UTC

010000101101001011011100110000101110010011 110010010000001101001011100110010000001101 101011101010110001101101000001000000110010 101100001011100110110100101100101011100100 010000100100000010000100110010101101110011 001000110010101110010001000000111001001110 10101101100011001010111001100100001

Re: Pronunciations for hexadecimal numbers (1968)

#113

Post by vermilingua » Tue, Aug 27, 2019, 2:05 AM UTC

eslaught wrote: post #77

vermilingua wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pronounce 11,78D vs B78D.

As suggested in a cousin: onety-one thousand, seven hundred and eighty thirteen. Every word (phrase in the case of hundred/thousand) becomes strictly one digit, as opposed to normal English where e.g. "thirteen" is actually two digits.

But onety-one thousand isn’t strictly one digit, is it?

Re: Pronunciations for hexadecimal numbers (1968)

#114

Post by segmondy » Tue, Aug 27, 2019, 6:23 AM UTC

There was a time when people programmed by hex and punched in code using strictly hex keyboard. I suppose this is what it was, even in the 90's, the heath kits were hex only.

Re: Pronunciations for hexadecimal numbers (1968)

#115

Post by MayeulC » Tue, Aug 27, 2019, 6:39 AM UTC

vermilingua wrote: post #64

lucideer wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see no reason this couldn't be applied to English. "-nz(e)", etc. is akin to "-teen", and beyond that it should be exactly the same, with septante/seventy, huitante/eighty, and nonante/ninety being the popular English versions (unlike e.g. Metropolitan French). B78D: Eleven Thousand Seven Hundred and Eighty Thirteen See also Tolkien's famous hobbit's birthday party.

Pronounce 11,78D vs B78D.

From the grandparent:

11 78D seize-un mille sept cent octante-quatrorze.

Or, in English:

11,78D Sixteen-one thousand seven hundred eighty fourteen.

Re: Pronunciations for hexadecimal numbers (1968)

#116

Post by kbwt » Tue, Aug 27, 2019, 7:58 AM UTC

OJFord wrote: post #59

mc32 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn’t an issue what the words for numbers mean? Does thousand mean the quantity itself or does it mean the decimal 1000? In other words thousand = 1000 (dec) and 0x3E8 (hex). Are they both pronounced “thousand”? When someone says mix a thousand liters of glycol with ten kilograms of salt, both 1000 (dec) and 0x3E8 (hex) mean “thousand” each of something. The only way to get around this is if every whole number on the…

If someone said to me 'one thousand base sixteen' I would think '=> 1000_16 => 0x1000'; certainly not that they were converting all numbers to base ten solely for the purpose of speech. Thus, I agree with you, there's value in making digits beyond 9 pronouncable for higher bases (if dealing with them enough to make devising the system worthwhile of course).

I would think exactly the opposite.

Re: Pronunciations for hexadecimal numbers (1968)

#117

Post by FoeNyx » Tue, Aug 27, 2019, 8:00 AM UTC

tasogare wrote: post #34

Tharkun wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Belgian French uses septante/nonante. Huitante would be a great addition.

I personally prefer octante. Septante and huitante sounds to much like just slapping -tante to 7 and 8. And just to be coherent, I would love to have heptante for 70.

"septante", "octante", "nonante" would be coherently based on Latin etymons, but if you want to coherently use "heptante", which relies on a Greek etymon, you should probably also use "ennéante" in lieu of "nonante".

Re: Pronunciations for hexadecimal numbers (1968)

#118

Post by FoeNyx » Tue, Aug 27, 2019, 8:32 AM UTC

Also in 1968, the french singer — and hobbyist mathematician — Boby Lapointe ¹ proposed a graphical representation and pronunciation system for hexadecimal numbers, named bibi-binary ². The pronunciation part is based on the combinations of 4 consonants (HBKD) with 4 vowels (OAEI). It's probably less practical than a system relying on similarities with words for native numbers, but it was probably more of an artsy experiment and it produces shorter (and maybe funnier) results.

¹ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boby_Lapointe

² https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bibi-binary

Re: Pronunciations for hexadecimal numbers (1968)

#119

Post by bjackman » Tue, Aug 27, 2019, 8:58 AM UTC

evanb wrote: post #45

bjackman wrote: post #39

Much 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.

Yeah although we would probably have said "two eight zillion" not "twenty eight zillion", and in the kind of conversations we'd have, it wouldn't really matter.

"Where is the stack base supposed to be?"

"O X 8 zillion"

"Oh, the system crashed with stack pointer at 0 X two eight zillion, something must have gone badly wrong!"

Re: Pronunciations for hexadecimal numbers (1968)

#120

Post by teddyh » Tue, Aug 27, 2019, 12:53 PM UTC

reaperducer wrote: post #109

Zenst wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting, it may well have some bearing upon the UNICODE naming which came about in 1991, which would be around the time that it's usage for "~" seemed to wane out of use. "#" was another one with many names that have consolidated over time, been decades since heard anybody refer to it as a checkerboard, which was never as elegant and can see why "hash" became the norm.

Unless it's on twitter, it's still either a "pound" or "octothorp" to me, depending on context. Hash is a breakfast food.

This list derives from revision 2.3 of the Usenet ASCII pronunciation guide. Single characters are listed in ASCII order; character pairs are sorted in by first member. For each character, common names are given in rough order of popularity, followed by names that are reported but rarely seen; official ANSI/CCITT names are surrounded by brokets: . Square brackets mark the particularly silly names introduced by INTERCAL.

# Common: number sign; pound; pound sign; hash; sharp; crunch ; hex; [mesh]. Rare: grid; crosshatch; octothorpe; flash; , pig-pen; tictactoe; scratchmark; thud; thump; splat.

http://www.catb.org/~esr/jargon/html/A/ASCII.html

So, according to the above, the most common name for # is “number sign”, and the officiall ANSI/CCITT term is “square”.

Also, in the 1975 movie Three Days of the Condor, the term “symbol for number” is used, presumably referring to #.