Let's stop counting centuries • Hacker News Board

Re: Let's stop counting centuries

#251

Post by tetris11 » Sat, Jul 06, 2024, 9:59 AM UTC

jrockway wrote: post #60

MarkLowenstein wrote: post #30

A lot of this runaround is happening because people get hung up on the fact that the "AD" era began as AD 1. But that year is not magic--it didn't even correlate with the year of Jesus's birth or death. So let's just start the AD era a year before, and call that year "AD 0". It can even overlap with BC 1. BC 1 is the same as AD 0. Fine, we can handle that, right? Then the 00s are [0, 100), 100s are [100, 200), etc. Z…

I would also accept that the 1st century has one less year than future centuries. Everyone said Jan 1, 2000 was "the new millenium" and "the 21st century". It didn't bother anyone except Lua programmers, I'm pretty sure.

> It didn't bother anyone except Lua programmers, I'm pretty sure.

What's this reference to? Afaik, Lua uses `os.time` and `os.date` to manage time queries, which is then reliant on the OS and not Lua itself

Re: Let's stop counting centuries

#252

Post by psychoslave » Sat, Jul 06, 2024, 10:01 AM UTC

rz2k wrote: post #146

lucb1e wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just to make sure I understood this, that would be used as "17th settecento" to mean 1700s right? (This Xth century business always bothered and genuinely confused me to no end and everyone always dismissed my objections that it's a confusing thing to say. I'm a bit surprised, but also relieved, to see this thread exists. Yes, please, kill all off-by-one century business in favor of 1700s and 17th settecento or anyth…

Think of it as the 700s, which is a weird way to refer to the 1700s, unless you are taking a cue from the common usage. That’s just how the periods are referenced by Italian art historians.

Not much different from 60s refering to 1960 to 1969, to my mind

Re: Let's stop counting centuries

#253

Post by hypertele-Xii » Sat, Jul 06, 2024, 10:02 AM UTC

d0mine wrote: post #192

gcp123 wrote: post #2

Author makes a good point. "1700s" is both more intuitive and more concise than "18th century". The very first episode of Alex Trebeck's Jeopardy in 1984 illustrates how confusing this can be: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KDTxS9_CwZA The "Final Jeopardy" question simply asked on what date did the 20th century begin, and all three contestants got it wrong, leading to a 3-way tie.

There is no "0" year, 1 is the 1st year, so 100th year is still the 1st century, therefore 2nd century starts in 101 and 20th in 1901.

What? 0 is the year Jesus Christ was born.

Re: Let's stop counting centuries

#254

Post by ash » Sat, Jul 06, 2024, 10:06 AM UTC

tetris11 wrote: post #249

ash wrote: post #243

The article does not really resolve the ambiguity with 2000s which usually means 2000-2009, not 2000-2099. That said, in Finnish language people never count centuries. It's always "2000-luku" and "1900-luku", not 21th and 20th.

> This leaves ambiguous how to refer to decades like 1800-1809. For these you should ~~specify the wildcard digits as “the 180*s” manually~~ write out the range. Please do not write “the 181st decade”. I think it wouldn't be wrong to say "the 1800s decade" or "the primus 2000s" or "the alpha 1900s"

I don't find it persuasive. First of all, people are not going to start writing and saying wildcards. Second, there is an established convention to say "2000s" and mean 2000-2009.

Re: Let's stop counting centuries

#255

Post by jrockway » Sat, Jul 06, 2024, 10:06 AM UTC

tetris11 wrote: post #251

jrockway wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would also accept that the 1st century has one less year than future centuries. Everyone said Jan 1, 2000 was "the new millenium" and "the 21st century". It didn't bother anyone except Lua programmers, I'm pretty sure.

> It didn't bother anyone except Lua programmers, I'm pretty sure. What's this reference to? Afaik, Lua uses `os.time` and `os.date` to manage time queries, which is then reliant on the OS and not Lua itself

Array indexes start at 1 by default, instead of 0.

Re: Let's stop counting centuries

#256

Post by nkrisc » Sat, Jul 06, 2024, 10:09 AM UTC

bitwize wrote: post #113

c0balt wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And while we are at it, Tim Apple

There was an airport-novel series about a future where people's surnames are the company they work for. It was called Jennifer Government. Some of the characters in Death Stranding , namely the main one, have a given-name, profession, employer convention -- as in Sam Porter Bridges.

And in the far future of that future surnames like Government or PepsiCo or Alcoa will be as common as Smith, Fletcher, and Miller.

Re: Let's stop counting centuries

#257

Post by hypertele-Xii » Sat, Jul 06, 2024, 10:09 AM UTC

pictureofabear wrote: post #94

MarkLowenstein wrote: post #30

A lot of this runaround is happening because people get hung up on the fact that the "AD" era began as AD 1. But that year is not magic--it didn't even correlate with the year of Jesus's birth or death. So let's just start the AD era a year before, and call that year "AD 0". It can even overlap with BC 1. BC 1 is the same as AD 0. Fine, we can handle that, right? Then the 00s are [0, 100), 100s are [100, 200), etc. Z…

We're too deep into this now. Imagine how much code would have to be rewritten.

Imagine how much code is being rewritten all the time for a variety of reasons. Code is live and must be maintained. Adding one more reason isn't much of a stretch.

Re: Let's stop counting centuries

#258

Post by psychoslave » Sat, Jul 06, 2024, 10:20 AM UTC

layer8 wrote: post #131

wryoak wrote: post #13

I thought this article was railing against the lumping together of entire spans of hundreds of years as being alike (ie, we lump together 1901 and 1999 under the name ”the 1900s” despite their sharing only numerical similarity), and was interested until I learned the author’s real, much less interesting intention

[flagged]

I found your sarcasm very enjoyable and ended up disappointed I couldn't come with the next meta-sarcasm. How dare you?!

Re: Let's stop counting centuries

#259

Post by mixmastamyk » Sat, Jul 06, 2024, 10:25 AM UTC

Dalewyn wrote: post #161

mixmastamyk wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could say that about anything. I limited my initial statement to educated folks, and presumably those who would like to be one. /history/democracy/milestones -> relatively important.

As very broad subjects? Yes. But any particular factoid about them is practically irrelevant for most people who don't actually have anything to do with that factoid. Hell, I would even go as far as to say the American Revolution is irrelevant even for most Americans because it has nothing of practical value. We (Americans) all know about it to varying degrees, but again that is due to growing up and being indoctrina…

"Nothing is important to know besides my lunch time..." yawn

Re: Let's stop counting centuries

#260

Post by psychoslave » Sat, Jul 06, 2024, 10:30 AM UTC

ggm wrote: post #214

Pick your battles. Is this easier or harder to win on than de-gendering romance languages? How about Americans stop with dropping the "and" in nineteen hundred AND twenty?

I'm close to finish a linguistic project where I provide a different paradigm perspective, where gender is a subcategory of grammatical geste, and I give five additional flections to all nouns in French that refer to living entities which usually decline only under only two genders at most.

Maybe I should start thinking about my next battle. :)