Comment by simonbarker87 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by simonbarker87 | Hacker News Reader

For me personally, it makes a huge difference. I recently installed a 600mm deep worktop in my office, lasted maybe 2 months before I ripped it out and replaced with a 900mm deep desk - much better, more breathing space and I can spread out over paper or just get some space around my monitor. On my PhD I managed to one of the few corner desks and guarded that thing with my life.

I assume it dates back to when I was studying for A-levels (UK school exams 16-18 years old). I would do all of my evening's prep (UK boarding school name for homework) on the largest table in the old library, I'd set up a sort of defensive wall of papers and folders that took up a 1-2 meter radius from me and sometimes more if I was working on a particularly large mind map. People soon got the idea and, since the school wasn't lacking for places to work, no one seemed to mind me bunking down for 2.5 hours (yes, we had enforced prep in silence from 7-9:30pm) every weekday evening and giving me all the space I needed.

Enjoy your new desk!

I find it interesting that you measure your desk in mm and not cm. Is that common in metric countries? For me, here in the States, I would say I moved from a 24in to 36in desk (which incidentally is also 2 feet to 3 feet, but I wouldn't use feet).

Most people outside the states and Great Britain use metric for everything.

But do you happen to know the answer to the question you were replying to? The one you answered wasn't the one that was asked.

Right, my bad.

Although when building and working with practical sizes feet and inches are more natural

Only when you're familiar with it. If someone says "150 cm" I know exactly and immediately how much that is. If someone says "5 feet" (which is equivalent) I have to convert it to metric manually.

For some reason, in the UK at least, desks do seem to be measured in mm, yes. It's not a particularly common unit for measuring other large items though, more generally we'll use metres and centimetres (with the correct spelling ;-)

You know that weird "re" spelling on your words, as well as the "ou" in "colour" for example, are borrowed from French. The spelling of those words (and many others) did not include those letters in those orders until someone in England thought that "maybe France wouldn't hate us so much if we adopted some of their spelling."

Source: I asked someone who has a Masters in English and forgot most of what she said, so don't hold my feet to the fire on details.

My point is that non-American English spelling is wrong in many cases, intentionally. So don't go around saying you're correct. You mutilated your own language to appease the French.

Hold on, though. "Metres" as a unit is a French word, because Napoleon invented the metric system during the French revolution as a break with the feudal past (source: i asked someone who has a PhD in the history of science and forgot most of what they said). For devices which measure things, we use the proper spelling - i have a gas meter, an electricity meter, and an iambic pentameter.

If we're going to talk about the deliberate sabotage of orthography, then surely Noah Webster's "thru", "catalog", etc are the most outrageous?

That said, as with metre/meter, we have at least salvaged some Websterisms as adding nuance to the language. In the UK, i write computer programs, but pretend to enjoy opera programmes.

For units less than ~2 metres, and particularly with any trade related measurements, millimetres is the common unit. There is some overlap into metres - for example 300mm, 600mm, 900mm, 1200mm/1.2m, 1500mm/1.5m, 1800mm/1.8m, 2100mm/2.1m, 2.4m, 2.7m etc. Centimetres are used in clothing but very little else (this is NZ/Aus/UK, I don't know about elsewhere).

particularly with any trade related measurements

This is the key thing, i think. There is a convention in some technical disciplines - mechanical engineering, architecture, civil engineering up to a point - that things are measured in millimetres even when they're on the scale of metres. So you get a ceiling that is 2400 mm high, or pilings on a 1500 mm spacing, etc.

I'm not sure why. I suppose it means that the large things are directly comparable with small things that are more naturally measured in millimetres (if your tiles are 300 mm, you need eight courses for your 2400 mm bathroom wall), and you can use single unit on drawings taking in large and small things (the engine block is 900 mm long, the bolts are 12 mm across, on 150 mm spacings).

It probably ties in with preferred numbers somehow:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preferred_number

After entering engineering full time, I had forgotten cm is much more common in casual use (at least in the US), vs mm in engineering.

This is speculation on my part, but I consider mm better because it allows greater resolution than cm without fractions and makes more sense when you consider cm is the only non-thousandth metric prefix we use for common units (mL,kg,km - dB would be an exception). cm on the other hand is closer in scale to inches and generally easier to estimate because of this.

Ha, yeah good spot. In the trades (builders, joiners, plumbers, electrician etc) everything is done in mm in the UK. I’m not a tradesperson (degrees are in electrical and electronic engineering so equally happy talking in nano and micro metres as I am anything else) but have renovated houses and now run a factory that I spec’d, manufacturing a physical product that I co-designed and mm is now my unit of choice. I was measuring the internals of a van I am converting into a camper the other week and wrote everything in mm, even the length at 4050mm!

My assumption is that it is a. more accurate and b. allows you to talk about a 22mm pipe (standard plumbing diameter pipe) in the same unit as a 2400x1200 sheet of plaster board, without having to worry about what to do with the decimal point - pure speculation though.

Ironically people will say “twelve hundred” in this context which is deemed to be of American influence, but in any other context they would more likely say “one thousand two hundred”. Given that the US is imperial this can’t be a trade influence - must be for speed and ease of pronunciation.

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