alt Hacker NewsIf you want to keep software working on systems with a 9-bit byte or other weirdness, that's entirely on you. No one else needs or wants the extra complexity. Little endian is logical and won, big endian is backwards and lost for good reason. (Look at how arbitrary precision arithmetic is implemented on a BE system; chances are it's effectively LE anyway.)
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yjftsjthsd-h • today at 2:44 AM
> Little endian is logical and won, big endian is backwards and lost for good reason.
No, BE is logical, but LE is efficient (for machines).
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pezezin • today at 4:55 AM
LE is not "logical", it won because the IBM PC compatible won, simple as that.
You don't need the "Little endian is logical" part.
Most people just don't care and can't be bothered to spend time making sure code is "endian portable".
Couldn't care less if it is easier to "read in crash dumps" TBH.
I don't even write server code to be portable to anything other than x86_64 or lately just use avx512 without any fallback since it is not needed in practice.
I'm not doing anything people care about probably but I imagine it is a similar feeling for people that do.
I would rather have small software that compiles fast than to add 50 #ifdef into it and make it burn my eyes, and spend time thinking "but would this work in big endian"