Let's stop counting centuries • Hacker News Board

Re: Let's stop counting centuries

#371

Post by lye » Sat, Jul 06, 2024, 5:09 PM UTC

zdragnar wrote: post #366

lye wrote: post #361

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What the hell are you talking about. If it's 0°C outside (or below that), I know that it's high time to put winter tires on because the water in the puddles will freeze and driving on summer tires becomes risky. I had to look it up, but apparently that's +32 °F. Good luck remembering that. +10°C is "it's somewhat cold, put a jacket on". +20°C is comfortable in light clothing. +30°C is pretty hot. +40°C is really hot,…

You'll want winter tires on well before the air temperature hits freezing for water. Forecasts aren't that predictable, and bridges (no earth heat sink underneath) will ice over before roads do. 40 F is a good time for getting winter tires on. As someone who lives in a humid, wet area that goes from -40 at night in winter to 100+ F in summer, I also vastly prefer Fahrenheit. The difference between 60, 70, 80 and 90 i…

Well, it's been working fine for me for about 15 years, let's agree to disagree here. I would still find it easier to remember to change the tires at +1°C than whatever the hell it comes down to in Fahrenheit.

I too live in a region with 80 (Celsius) degree yearly variation (sometimes more; the maximum yearly difference I've lived through is about 90 degrees IIRC: -45 in January to +43 in July), and Fahrenheit makes absolutely no sense to me in this climate.

Re: Let's stop counting centuries

#372

Post by cvoss » Sat, Jul 06, 2024, 5:20 PM UTC

The same off-by-one annoyance under discussion bites the author in this very article and he didn't even notice: He calls 1776 the 76th year of the 18th century. But it's not! It's the 77th year of that century!

Re: Let's stop counting centuries

#373

Post by bonzini » Sat, Jul 06, 2024, 5:23 PM UTC

cvoss wrote: post #372

The same off-by-one annoyance under discussion bites the author in this very article and he didn't even notice: He calls 1776 the 76th year of the 18th century. But it's not! It's the 77th year of that century!

The 18th century started in 1701 and ended in 1800.

Re: Let's stop counting centuries

#374

Post by OJFord » Sat, Jul 06, 2024, 5:25 PM UTC

bonzini wrote: post #373

cvoss wrote: post #372

The same off-by-one annoyance under discussion bites the author in this very article and he didn't even notice: He calls 1776 the 76th year of the 18th century. But it's not! It's the 77th year of that century!

The 18th century started in 1701 and ended in 1800.

I could give you 'ended in 1800' (I'd prefer 'at') but it very much started in 1700, not 1701.

Re: Let's stop counting centuries

#375

Post by mananaysiempre » Sat, Jul 06, 2024, 5:28 PM UTC

1over137 wrote: post #367

phkahler wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody's asking to reprogram anyone. Just stop using one of two conventions. The reason to do it is simple and obvious. I'm really baffled at the responses here advocating strongly for the current way. But I guess that's just a "people thing"

Asking me to stop using my preferred convention is tantamount to 'reprogramming' me.

Reprogramming mankind is unreasonable. Reprogramming you may not be.

Re: Let's stop counting centuries

#376

Post by OJFord » Sat, Jul 06, 2024, 5:29 PM UTC

einherjae wrote: post #103

mjmahone17 wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“Half one” is archaic English, and common German, for 12:30. Similarly “my 27th year” just sounds archaic to me: I wonder if you went through a bunch of 19th century writing if you’d see ages more often be “Xth year” vs “X-1 years old”. There may be something cultural that caused such a shift, like a change in how math or reading is taught (or even that it’s nearly universally taught, which changes how we think and s…

Isn’t “half one” used as a short form of “half past one” these days, I.e. 01:30? That has been a source of confusion for someone used to the Germanic way.

In the UK yes, I think not in AmE? At least I'm pretty sure they don't say 'quarter to' or 'quarter past', and do say 'a half after'.

(I had some confused conversation with a bus driver once. Bizarre experience to have so much language barrier between two EFL speakers, in English!)

Re: Let's stop counting centuries

#377

Post by bonzini » Sat, Jul 06, 2024, 5:30 PM UTC

OJFord wrote: post #374

bonzini wrote: post #373

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The 18th century started in 1701 and ended in 1800.

I could give you 'ended in 1800' (I'd prefer 'at') but it very much started in 1700, not 1701.

I didn't make the convention. The 17th century started on January 1, 1701 and ended on December 31, 1800.

That's because the purported year of the birth of Christ was the "first year of the lord", or AD 1, and that's when the first century started. In turn that's because at the time Latin had a word for nothing but not a word for zero, so you couldn't count years starting at zero.

That also means that those old enough to have partied on December 31, 1999 were technically partying for the beginning of the last year of the second millennium.

Re: Let's stop counting centuries

#378

Post by OJFord » Sat, Jul 06, 2024, 5:34 PM UTC

kstrauser wrote: post #23

milliams wrote: post #11

It's easy, we should have simply started counting centuries from zero. Centuries should be zero-indexed, then everything works. We do the same with people's ages. For the entire initial year of your life you were zero years old. Likewise, from years 0-99, zero centuries had passed so we should call it the zeroth century! At least this is how I justify to my students that zero-indexing makes sense. Everyone's fought t…

We don't 0-index people's ages. There are a million books about "baby's first year", while they're still 0 years old.

Yeah we do, because their 'first year' isn't their age. We do their age in (also zero-indexed) months/weeks/days.

In Indian English terms, we do 'complete' age - aiui more common in India is to one-index, i.e. you're the age of the year you're in, and to disambiguate you might hear someone say they're '35 complete', meaning they have had 35 anniversaries of their birth (36 incomplete).

Re: Let's stop counting centuries

#379

Post by satvikpendem » Sat, Jul 06, 2024, 5:34 PM UTC

cvoss wrote: post #372

The same off-by-one annoyance under discussion bites the author in this very article and he didn't even notice: He calls 1776 the 76th year of the 18th century. But it's not! It's the 77th year of that century!

You didn't read far enough because he specifically notes this. The 18th century started on January 1, 1701, therefore 1776 is indeed the 76th year of that century, not the 77th, as the year 1700 is part of the 17th century.

Re: Let's stop counting centuries

#380

Post by fsckboy » Sat, Jul 06, 2024, 5:34 PM UTC

dash2 wrote: post #355

I use "the 1900s" to mean 1900-1910. I understand the difficulty, but I don't think it is too terrible for us to get used to it and we aren't gonna change the past 500 years of literature that already did this. Also, it's ironic for a bunch of people who literally count arrays from zero to be complaining about this... :-P

counting arrays from zero was C's contribution to the public consciousness (inherited from BCPL, and perhaps from ASM) people here generally hate C so it's triggering and they are trying to forget[1]

[1] this wasn't a footnote, it was forget array index 1.