But people don't generally count in decimals, they'd count out one pound and one penny.

So you'd count out 1 pound and 1p, 1 pound and 2p... 1 pound and 9p, 1 pound and 10p - so you don't need the zero until 10.

But you're just proving my point: you get to 1 pound and 10p before you get to 2 pounds. So you get to a zero, 1.10, before you reach 2. That's the point of decimals that I am not understanding why people are ignoring.

Then you are counting pennies not pounds, so you're still starting at 1.

In other words, you start mentally counting from your smallest unit of precision in use.

This is a fun thought exercise, but what a pointlessly pedantic tangent this thread took…

Absolutely, but then, the thread itself is a bit pointless, and pedantry is a pastime on HN :)

I agree, in practical terms you're counting two things - pennies and pounds. You need a zero for the pennies counter before you need a two for the pounds counter for sure.

But you don't count 'I have one hundredth of a pound, I have one fiftieth of a pound, I have three hundredths of a pound, I have a twenty-fifth of a pound' and so on.