• Randelung@lemmy.world
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    5 months ago

    10 as the first overflow of digits is not a clear vlaue, it depends on the notation because its base is unclear.

    Ten as the English word is 100% defined. The issue is we translate seamlessly between the word and number, but there really is no confusion when writing ten. 10 in hex has a different english word: sixteen.

    English number names are mostly decimal-based, but their values are still fixed. Ten isn’t the word for “the first time our number system overflows”, it’s an amount.

    So I disagree. Ten will always be (…) this many, because it’s an English word.

    • psud@lemmy.world
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      4 months ago

      If you are working in a different number system with other people ten loses its unique meaning just like any word that has another technical meaning.

      In code 0x10 is hex 10 (what you’d call sixteen), but in spoken technical English you don’t need to pronounce the 0x