Opinion sought

[venta]

[Poll #230701]

Comments

[wimble.livejournal.com]

And, somewhere, I've got documentation to prove it. 'fraid I've no longer got access to my usual references.

[venta.livejournal.com]

beckyc -- This should be a ticky box so I can pick the top three. 1 and 2 would mean subtly different things.

Could you elaborate on that ? What would be the difference between endianity and endianness ?

[arralethe.livejournal.com]

Surely the adjective already comes from a noun, therefore extending it into another noun is purely bad grammar?

[wimble.livejournal.com]

Oh, for the record, the earliest citation of "endian" is from Gulliver's travels, according to which end of an egg should be cracked open first.

Really must clear the crap off my home machine!

[nalsa.livejournal.com]

I was thinking that, too. Surely it's just "end"?

Is this coming from "big endian" and "little endian"?

[venta.livejournal.com]

Is this coming from "big endian" and "little endian"?

Indeed.

So if I want to write something like "we can determine the endianness of x", using "end" just won't do.

[bateleur.livejournal.com]

Yep. As in "ten little, nine little, eight little endian..." !

[venta.livejournal.com]

Well, someone had to say it :)

[waistcoatmark.livejournal.com]

It's always verbally referred to as endianness wherever I've worked, and a quick google shows that the double-n spelling is 4 times more prevalent than the single-n.

[nalsa.livejournal.com]

Mmm. You can't write "we can determine whether x is big or little endian..."?

Despite it being sensible geek language, "endian" is one of those words that Just Isn't Right. To me, at least.

[nalsa.livejournal.com]

Groan groan groan groan groan...

[arralethe.livejournal.com]

Ah, and here we have the split between Arts and Sciences, where the Arts people hold true to the belief that if you make up adjectives and nouns willy-nilly, as science people are wont to do, then you have only yourself to blame when your sentences don't work. So there. 8-p

[(Anonymous)]

Seems to me both "endianity" and "endianness" are correct, but there's no reason in the world why you couldn't just write "byte order".

--
Richard

[onebyone.livejournal.com]

there's no reason in the world

Unless you're not talking about byte order. The concept also applies to dates, in which case 2004-01-09 is big endian, 9 January 2004 is little endian, and January 9, 2004 is middle endian. And eggs.

[venta.livejournal.com]

Well, if you let me know the official, will-nilly-free process for getting a new word when one is required, I'll follow it :)

[venta.livejournal.com]

January 9, 2004 is middle endian

And it was all going so well.

[onebyone.livejournal.com]

The point being that anything middle endian is automatically Just Wrong.

[arralethe.livejournal.com]

Sadly yet to be fully developed in this country as it is in France, where they actually have an Academy that decides these things (like whether to accept "le hotdog" and "le Big Mac"). Sometimes I think this country is so backward.....

[beckyc.livejournal.com]

Well, as an analogy, consider the words
purity
pureness
and note how you would typically use them in slightly different ways.

(OK, OK, I'm making it up ;-)

[venta.livejournal.com]

Er, I don't believe I've ever used the word pureness. Can someone put it in a sentence for me ?

[jiggery-pokery.livejournal.com]

*convulses with laughter, nearly falls off chair*

[venta.livejournal.com]

Blimey... I didn't realise it was a Real Word, as opposed to something sad comptuer users had dreamed up.

And one notional kudo to onebyone.

[venta.livejournal.com]

Yeuch, the last thing we want is an Academie Anglaise.

Let's face it, I like making words up willy-nilly :)

[bateleur.livejournal.com]

Like the US ?

But seriously - it should be clear that big endian things are daft too. The only thing which persuades us even for a moment that big endian makes any sense at all is that we write big numbers with most significant digit on the left and yet we enumerate lists left to right.

Little endian is the One True Way. I want my entire computer to just store ONE BIG NUMBER !

(Plus, furthermore, "Ten little, nine little..." etc. !)

[jiggery-pokery.livejournal.com]

That's a rare one - a proper .sig separator on LiveJournal!

(How many points must that be worth for I-Spy LJ?)