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Comment by zwirbl | Hacker News Reader

If I ever got a tattoo, I would get an explanation of endianness on my left arm because I always mix them up

Sure the concept is easy, but have you ever met someone who mixes left and right up? It can be quite catastrophic in traffic

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My problem with "endian" is the overloaded definition of the word "end" (does a 1-dimensional object have 2 ends or 1 start and 1 end?), and the ambiguity about whether you're talking about the "end" of the number or the "end" of the segment of memory. If you take "end" to mean "the end of the memory segment" (as opposed to the start) then the two definitions are the wrong way round. I think something like "big-first" and "little-first" would have been much more intuitive.

The interpretation that I find the most intuitive puts them the wrong way round, to the point where I remember which is which by specifically remembering "it's the opposite of what you'd think".

And at that point I usually look it up in wikipedia or on my left arm, because I'm not sure anymore

Every time I try to use a “it’s the opposite of what you think” mental shorthand, I get used to the wrong-seeming (but correct) way it is, and then I start mentally flipping it back to the actually incorrect version.

> have you ever met someone who mixes left and right up?

There's no right, there's only left and the other left.

I've always liked "left and metric left".

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