From: Chuck Guzis <ccl...@sydex.com> Numbering of bits in a word is also interesting. Is the high order bit in a 64 bit word, bit 0 or bit 63? Both conventions have been employed.
On Mon, 1 Feb 2021, John Ames via cctalk wrote:
This one has always boggled me, because it's the one aspect of the Endian Wars where there's a simple, straightforward answer grounded in basic mathematics - base ^ digit-number only gives the correct place-value when the lowest-order bit is numbered zero. It's beyond my ken how anybody thought the reverse was *valid,* let alone a good idea.
It probably originated from our system of writing numbers with most significant on the left, least significant on the right. Then combined with somebody not even thinking in terms of "one's place"/"ten's place", or "one's place"/"two's place"/"four's place" etc. and simply numbering from left to right. It is unfortunate that they were permitted to do so.
