1 yr. ago • 93%

call the doctor, the CS doctor

41 comments

Are you indexing your fingers or counting them ?

Indexing starts ar 0 but counting starts at 1.

45
- This.
  
  One of the reasons indexing starts at zero is because back when we used to use pointers and memory addresses, the first byte(s) of an array were at the address where the array was stored. Let’s say it is at 1234. If it was an array of bytes, the first data element was at 1234, or 1234 + 0. The second element would be at 1235, or 1234 + 1. So the first element is at location 0 and the second at location 1, where the index is actually just an offset from the base address. There may be other/better reasons, but that’s what I was taught back in the 90s.
  
  Counting always starts at 1 (if we’re only using integers). You don’t eat a hamburger and say you ate zero hamburgers.
  
  23
  
  There was a time when I had to switch back and forth between Fortran90 and C several times a day, and it messed me up so bad that doing simple tasks like counting apples at the grocery gave me anxiety.
  
  10
  
  I do say I ate zero hamburgers if I just started counting and I have yet to eat one
  
  7
  
  "used to"?
  
  5
  
  Permanently Deleted
  
  2
Ffs. 16, 8, 4, 2, 1.

38
- I'm glad I'm not the only one. My son is a year and half old. I've been teaching to count on his hand in binary since day 0. He goes wild and celebrates when we reach 31 🙂
  
  11
  
  My siblings and I always loved the number 4 because our puritanical mother was so casual about sticking her middle finger out at only that moment. That was just about the most taboo thing we could imagine, and it was as a result hilarious.
  
  7
  
  I'm in my mid 40s, and I've never thought to count in binary on my fingers. I haven't needed to use binary for about 30 years, and I'm easily the geekiest of my friends, so I've never had an excuse to do it for fun.
  
  You've just put a huge smile on my face.
  
  Guess what I'm teaching my kid this week 😁
  
  1
- 4
  
  1
Count in binary up to 1023 on your hands you filthy casual

15
- just beware when counting the number 4 in public
  
  7
  
  Or 256, or 260.
  
  4
Jokes on you, I use my fingers as bits for a total of 1024 numbers (0-1023). Or I can sacrifice 1 finger time be a sign bit and count negative numbers too.

14
- Sacrifice a few extra bits and you can do floating point arithmetic on your fingers too
  
  9
- Jokes on you, fingers are tri-state (fully extended, fully closed, bent at middle knuckle) not binary, so I can count to 59049.
  
  Someone with better finger control should be able to treat them as quad-state, granting the ability to count to 1048576 by bending just the outer knuckle.
  
  6
  
  Let's just keep multi level cells to just flash memory.
  
  3
  
  3^10-1=59048.
  
  1
- I like this idea in theory, but some combinations of fingers are very awkward to extend without the others, and one particular combination is very rude.
  
  3
- I’ve tried this a few times and my fingers always get really Fucking confused after about four bits.
  
  2
  
  You need error correction fingers
  
  1
- I can't imagine a scenario when you need to be able to do BOTH positive and negative numbers at the same time 😂
  
  2
- If we figure out a clever trick with phalanges we can go even further
  
  1
You count one finger up as the same as no fingers up? Counting is not the same as an index.

10
One time, I got hit with "You're a programmer, you should be able to count." and yep, made that exact joke...

9
- Permanently Deleted
  
  0
  
  Band practice. We were playing some rapid song with changing time signatures, so everyone was struggling to count along. I just commented on it, so got some flak, but only as a joke.
  
  2
def count_fingers(hand: list): count = len(hand) if count != 5: if count < 5: raise Exception("Check if fingers missing, or just smart ass") else: raise Exception("Oh... oh no.") return count
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- Permanently Deleted
  
  6
  
  I'll use ternary operators when you force them into my cold, dead hands
  
  1
Lua crew represent

4
- rare lua L
  
  1
If you count your knuckles you can get all the way up to b on one hand! Both hands can get up to 17!

3
- Up to 355687428096000? That's impressive!
  
  4

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