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lowbloodsugartoday at 2:51 AM2 repliesview on HN

No, BE is intuitive for humans who write digits with the highest power on the left.

LE is logical which is also why it is more efficient and more intuitive for humans once they get past “how we write numbers with a pencil”.


Replies

yjftsjthsd-htoday at 3:33 AM

No, BE is logical because it puts bits and bytes in the same order. That humans use BE is also nice but secondary to that. I don't have strong feelings about whether fifty-one thousand nine hundred sixty-six is written as 0xcafe or 0xefac, but I feel quite comfortable suggesting that 0xfeca is absurd. (FWIW, this is a weak argument for what computers should do; if LE is more efficient for machines then let them use it)

Edit: switched example to hex

Edit2: actually this is still slightly out of whack, but I don't feel like switching to binary so take it as a loose representation rather than literal

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zephentoday at 3:34 AM

> BE is intuitive for humans who write digits with the highest power on the left.

But only because when they dump memory, they start with the lowest address, lol.

Why don't these people reverse numberlines and cartesian coordinate systems while they're at it?