Same number of gates either way

Definitely not, which is why many 8-bit CPUs are LE. Carries propagate upwards, and incrementers are cheaper than a length-dependent subtraction.

So, to be clear, I was writing about when you design a computer. It truly is the same number of gates either way. I have written my fair share of verilog. At one level, it's just a convention.

For the use of a computer, yes, if you are doing multi-word arithmetic, it can matter.

OTOH, to be perfectly fair and balanced, multi-word comparisons work better in big-endian.