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Comment by ronaldx | Hacker News Reader

The fact that programmers can't remember < and > well illustrates why children shouldn't be chastised for getting (for example) b and d wrong.

I have dealt with this by conditioning myself to always read < as 'is less than'

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When I was in grad school a friend in another department said "You guys in CS have much nicer printers; can I mail you my thesis and have you print it out? And how would I mail it?" I said "Sure; Just do 'mail me@school.edu less-than-symbol filename". Later he calls in a panic -- "my thesis file has disappeared! I did what you said ... oh, wait a minute, I might have done greater-than instead of less-than..."

Fortunately for both of us, he had been diligent about making backups and din't lose his entire thesis.

I find it hard to believe that a statistically normal programmer mixes up < and >. That sounds more like dyslexia.

This is the first time I'm hearing about this too so I think there is more to it. I don't even see why a mnemonic is required since the shape of both '<' and '>' clearly demonstrate the relationship that the operator is testing.

I probably should have chosen a better mnemonic to start from! I'd point out that if you see greater and less than more like arrows it's utterly confusing. I'm not denying I'm probably weird in that respect, it's just something I have to use tricks to remember….

Also a lot of people have trouble with the back and forward slashes. When teaching html, people got the closing slash mixed up, it was all over the place.

I was surprised to see that as an example as well, but then I thought back to starting out as a programmer.

I'm sure I spent many hours fixing bugs caused by getting < and > wrong.

I find it hard to believe that someone actually mixes these unless they completely skipped all math classes in school.

Ah, yes the "I can't fit it to my mental model, therefore it is impossible" argument.

When little, my brother used to mix up the words "more" and "less" while speaking. I don't doubt someone could mix up > and <.

It's easy. They're alligator mouths, that always go for the larger number (greedy alligators!)...

This genuinely confused me because I thought the larger number would eat the smaller number.

The alligator is just the symbol, ignoring the smaller number completely.

I used to mix it up in elementary school because the school teacher explained that "<" is "less" and ">" is "more". Even worse, she suggested to memorize it like this: |<leiner = kleiner (german, meaning less)

At some point I realized it's possible to memorize it visually, since then I never mixed it up again

Yeah people frequently mix up left and right also. And my brother always wrote his numbers backwards or rather left to right (units on the left).

I remember several kids in my class having great difficulty with < and > when they were first introduced. I can well imagine many of them just decided it was impossible and gave up.

Was it possible to give up? In my place, they wouldn't be let on to the next grade if they'd fail basic math - i.e., they'd spend the summer repeating it + an extra year in the same grade if that wasn't enough; so it would have to be a real exception to see a 10 year old who can't somehow manage that.

Anyways, the classic mnemonic for that was simple - for < and > the wide part contains more 'thingies' than the narrow part. They're actually taught before numbers or together with numbers, like [pic of four strawberries] > [pic of three strawberries].

I was taught the crocodile thing, but had real issues with it: I can think it through but it's not fast. I'm pretty much ambidexterous (i.e. write with left and catch a ball with my right) so while I can do quite a lot of things with both hands I also have problems with left and right!

I've known a few otherwise non-dyslexic programmers that have had this issue. One guy kept a sticky note on his monitor with "> Greater, < Less" written on it.

I find that really fascinating. Was it just those things? What about which paren (or brace) opens and which one closes? (I'm not being facetious!)

Teacher in elementary school taught me simple rule: signs < and > has two endings on one side and one ending (corner) on another. So two bigger than one and bigger number should be on side with two endings.

Mine taught us that it was an alligator, and it always wanted to eat the bigger number.

specifically for this one, I have the mnemonic that the side containing the lower value has only one vertex, while the higher has 2 :)

Yeah, the smaller end of the triangle is the smaller number and the wider end is the larger number.

Interesting. So other people too do get it mixed up. Makes me feel less silly when I find bits of my own code that looks like `x := >- receiverChannel`

I've always thought it's because of carelessness

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