I always see those videos where people give kids a walkman or a rotary phone and ask them to figure out what it is or how it works. I'm imagining some medieval merchant handing me an abacus and laughing because I can't figure it out.

[–] tetris11@lemmy.ml 16 points 4 days ago (1 children)

It's little endian, so the beads on the far right are used to outnumber the big endian beads at the top on the woke left. After several computations, the middle section is just gone

[–] TheRedSpade@lemmy.world 6 points 4 days ago (3 children)

Tried reading about endianness once. Pretty sure it can't be dumbed down enough for my brain.

[–] zerofk@lemmy.zip 16 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (1 children)

You know how some languages write left-to-right, and some rught-to-left? Endianness is that, for numbers.

Or another analogy is dates: 2025/12/31 is big endian, 31/12/2025 is little endian. And 12/31/2025 is middle endian. Which makes no sense at all because the middle is, by definition, not an end.

[–] TheRedSpade@lemmy.world 8 points 4 days ago (1 children)

I stand corrected. No idea what I was reading (several years ago), but whatever it was made it seem way more complicated. Maybe it was just an explanation from somebody who didn't know.

[–] wheezy@lemmy.ml 3 points 3 days ago

Likely it was being explained in the context of binary number representation as it is primarily important in computer architecture. If you're not already familiar with that then it was probably confusing explained in that context.

[–] tetris11@lemmy.ml 13 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

Big Endian    Little Endian:
 
 "1010"         "1010"
  ||||           ||||
 [1248]         [8421]

 (sum the numbers 
  corresponding to a 1)     

 1+4=5          8+2=10

Depending on whether the order of binary comes from the left (Big Endian) or from the right (Little Endian), the binary number of "1010" can equal 5 or 10

(My original comment was buzzword nonsense though)

[–] pinball_wizard@lemmy.zip 5 points 4 days ago

Ouch. I had to learn endianness once to solve a real life serialization bug. It sucked. I learned it for just long enough to correct the code for the corner cases involves, and then slept and forgot everything about it.

[–] psud@aussie.zone 1 points 3 days ago

Hint: each bar has five beads, with a 2 bead multiplier above

[–] fubarx@lemmy.world 13 points 4 days ago (2 children)

Young whippersnappers.

[–] oatscoop@midwest.social 13 points 4 days ago (2 children)

You kids don't know how good you have it!

[–] MeatPilot@lemmy.world 6 points 4 days ago (1 children)

At least you have hands! I had to get my fabricated from the town blacksmith.

[–] hakunawazo@lemmy.world 4 points 3 days ago

[–] CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org 2 points 4 days ago

Ooh ooh ooh?

[–] CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org 4 points 4 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

Fun fact, the Romans would never have labeled their abacuses like this. It would have made calculating very difficult; they effectively worked with modern numbers in bead form, and then used the famous numeral system just to record the results.

[–] CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org 8 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Don't buy copper from this guy, it's low-quality and your messenger will be treated with contempt.

[–] MadMadBunny@lemmy.ca 3 points 3 days ago

[–] Smokeydope@lemmy.world 2 points 3 days ago