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chmod775 a day ago

> Big endian systems store numbers the way us humans do: the largest number is written first.

Obviously the author was trying to just give a quick example to aid visualization, but here's some nitpicking: I can probably come up with at least IV writing systems used by humans that don't use "big endian" for numbers. Or either, really.

Examples: Tally marks, Ancient Egyptian numerals, Hebrew and Attic numerals, and obviously Roman numerals.

Also lots languages in written form order words somewhat... randomly (French, Danish, old English, ...).

pezezin a day ago | parent [-]

Roman numerals are big endian though. The current year is written as MMXXVI, not IVXXMM.

adrian_b a day ago | parent [-]

The convention that smaller number written to the left of bigger numbers should be subtracted instead of added, is a later addition to the Roman numerals.

The earlier system would write VIIII instead of IX.

With the original Roman numerals, the order of writing was completely irrelevant, because all parts were added and addition is comutative, so VIIII is the same as IIIIV or IIIVI.

Even in the later variant of Roman numerals, you can change the order of many symbols without changing the value.