Re:Why is the 0 next to 9, not next to 1?
by d1sxeyes on Thursday April 29, 2021 @05:44AM
(#26979119)
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.
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…