• @BorgDrone@lemmy.one
    link
    fedilink
    English
    5810 months ago

    Are you indexing your fingers or counting them ?

    Indexing starts ar 0 but counting starts at 1.

    • @FriendOfElphaba@sh.itjust.works
      link
      fedilink
      English
      2710 months ago

      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.

      • Haus
        link
        fedilink
        10
        edit-2
        10 months ago

        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.

      • Sonotsugipaa
        link
        fedilink
        English
        910 months ago

        I do say I ate zero hamburgers if I just started counting and I have yet to eat one

        • @FriendOfElphaba@sh.itjust.works
          link
          fedilink
          English
          210 months ago

          When you’ve eaten more than 50% of the hamburger, do you claim to have eaten one, or do you claim zero? Are you useing standard founding or are you using floor()?

          • Sonotsugipaa
            link
            fedilink
            English
            210 months ago

            I create a Vulkan instance, a device, a compute pipeline then use an image sampler with VK_FILTER_LINEAR on a single-texel image in order to interpolate the two adjacent values of hamburger eatage, simple as.

    • @Lodra@programming.dev
      link
      fedilink
      English
      1910 months ago

      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 🙂

      • radix
        link
        fedilink
        710 months ago

        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.

      • Tippon
        link
        fedilink
        English
        210 months ago

        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 😁

        • obosob
          link
          fedilink
          English
          310 months ago

          Most of the time it’s not exactly useful and some of the positions are awkward (e.g. 8, 9, 10), counting to 31 on one hand is maybe useful.

          More useful IMO is counting in base 6 and treating each hand as a single digit. i.e counting to 35 on 2 hands without awkward fingerings. Better than 10, less awkward than binary.

          • @Lodra@programming.dev
            link
            fedilink
            English
            110 months ago

            It does take s little practice but not too much. The awkward positions are easy enough after a few weeks.

            I chose binary for two reasons. First, it is occasionally useful to count that high on one hand. Second, the education when he’s older. I hope this will give him a note intuitive understanding of different bases. And binary is specifically useful for understanding comported and software development. I dont intend to push him toward a career in software but I think there’s a fair chance he chooses that anyways.

            Plus we’ve made it into something fun 🙂

          • Tippon
            link
            fedilink
            English
            110 months ago

            We’re about to start learning how to program, probably with Python, so it could be a good way to start thinking about how computers work. I never would have thought to try other systems though, so I’ll look into base 6. Thanks for the suggestion :)

            without awkward fingerings

            Oh, the fun I would have had with that phrasing if we weren’t talking about teaching kids… :D

  • @RacoonVegetable@reddthat.com
    link
    fedilink
    English
    1910 months ago

    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.

    • thor12022
      link
      fedilink
      610 months ago

      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.

    • @vithigar@lemmy.ca
      link
      fedilink
      510 months ago

      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.

      • nfh
        link
        fedilink
        English
        510 months ago

        Maybe that’s just because 132 is a rude number.

    • @BluesF@feddit.uk
      link
      fedilink
      210 months ago

      I can’t imagine a scenario when you need to be able to do BOTH positive and negative numbers at the same time 😂

  • 👁️👄👁️
    link
    fedilink
    English
    1210 months ago

    You count one finger up as the same as no fingers up? Counting is not the same as an index.

  • @Knusper@feddit.de
    link
    fedilink
    1010 months ago

    One time, I got hit with “You’re a programmer, you should be able to count.” and yep, made that exact joke…

      • @Knusper@feddit.de
        link
        fedilink
        210 months ago

        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.

  • @conditional_soup@lemm.ee
    link
    fedilink
    6
    edit-2
    10 months ago
    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