LWN's 2020 vision [LWN.net]

Engineers count from zero

Posted Jan 1, 2020 22:08 UTC (Wed) by schessman (subscriber, #82966) [Link] (1 responses)

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
See... It's always relative to one's personal bias.
Happy New Year, and judge not lest ye be judged.

Engineers count from zero

Posted Jan 9, 2020 9:13 UTC (Thu) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link]

Personal bias does not over-ride reality.

-4, -3, -2, -1, 1, 2, 3, 4, ...

Much as our counting system DOES include zero, the calendar pre-dates its "invention" in about 1000 AD.

Cheers,
Wol

LWN's 2020 vision

Posted Jan 1, 2020 22:16 UTC (Wed) by jake (editor, #205) [Link]

> No, it doesn't.

https://xkcd.com/2249/ :)

¡Feliz Año Nuevo!

jake

LWN's 2020 vision

Posted Jan 1, 2020 22:18 UTC (Wed) by mr_bean (subscriber, #5398) [Link]

But the marking of the years in decades is not about numeracy - it is about culture and convention.

So, "the twenties" is all years who's 10's digit is "2", nothing more or less.

LWN's 2020 vision

Posted Jan 1, 2020 22:45 UTC (Wed) by excors (subscriber, #95769) [Link] (9 responses)

Your argument is valid when talking about the 21st century or the 3rd millennium. If those started in 2000, the 1st century would have to be 99 years long to make it add up (in which case it wouldn't be a century so the 21st century would actually be the 20th). But decades are counted differently - nobody ever talks about the 203rd decade, so there's nothing contradictory about the convention where decades start in years divisible by 10.

LWN's 2020 vision

Posted Jan 2, 2020 3:17 UTC (Thu) by areilly (subscriber, #87829) [Link] (2 responses)

The first century was an invention of the sixth century, so it doesn't really matter how many years it had, and arguments to logic generally get confused about the non-existence of 0AD (1BC leads straight to 1AD in Anno Domini reckoning). No one was counting years that way, at that time.
So there isn't even anything contradictory about starting the 21st century in the year 2000, as most of the world actually celebrated. Of course having an excuse for another big party a year later is also fine.

LWN's 2020 vision

Posted Jan 9, 2020 1:10 UTC (Thu) by gwg (guest, #20811) [Link] (1 responses)

> So there isn't even anything contradictory about starting the 21st century in the year 2000, as most of the world actually celebrated. Of course having an excuse for another big party a year later is also fine.

On January 2nd, how many days of January have passed ?
(Hint: It's not 2.)

i.e. the name of the time period is the amount of time that will have passed when that period has ended.
On January 2nd, you are part way into the 2nd day, and 1 and a bit days have passed.
2 days will have elapsed at the start of January 3.

This is why we are in the 21st century, not the 20th.

i.e. there's a difference between measuring and naming, and it's not arbitrary, it's pure logic and maths.

Yes, you can say we're at the start of a new elapsed decade if we add a year at the very start of the epoch and call it "year 0".
But where else in measuring time do we call the first item "0", and add 1 to the total ?

LWN's 2020 vision

Posted Jan 9, 2020 13:07 UTC (Thu) by tao (subscriber, #17563) [Link]

"But where else in measuring time do we call the first item "0", and add 1 to the total ?"

You mean except "It's 00:30, during the first hour of the day"?

LWN's 2020 vision

Posted Jan 2, 2020 12:52 UTC (Thu) by jezuch (subscriber, #52988) [Link] (5 responses)

But we do say things like "the first decade of the Xth century" in which case the boundary of the centuries and the decades become misaligned and this is driving me nuts!!!

;)

LWN's 2020 vision

Posted Jan 2, 2020 13:51 UTC (Thu) by mathstuf (subscriber, #69389) [Link] (4 responses)

That's fine. It might also be the last decade of the previous century at the same time :) . Does winter "belong" to the year in which it starts or the year with most of its days? Why do we almost always (in the US at least) list spring as the "first" season?

LWN's 2020 vision

Posted Jan 2, 2020 14:40 UTC (Thu) by pizza (subscriber, #46) [Link] (3 responses)

Because the growing season starts in the spring?

LWN's 2020 vision

Posted Jan 9, 2020 9:17 UTC (Thu) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link] (2 responses)

> Why do we almost always (in the US at least) list spring as the "first" season?

Because, until a couple of hundred years ago, New Year's Day was the 25th March? I think it changed (in the Anglo-Saxon world) just before American Independence.

Incidentally, that's behind why October is named the 8th month etc etc - they were until two new months were stuck at the start of the year.

Cheers,
Wol

LWN's 2020 vision

Posted Jan 9, 2020 14:14 UTC (Thu) by amacater (subscriber, #790) [Link]

1752 should be the change for England (and, by extension) US at that stage. for fun - look at the calendar for September 1752.

March 25th was a quarter day - so that's when taxes fell due - and was the start of the legal new year because it was easier for judges to give up going on circuit and taking the courts around the country in the worst of the winter. January 1st was already established as New Years Day in some calendars in Europe.

A remnant of March 25th as quarter day is, allegedly, the ffact that the UK tax year runs until April 5th [March 25th + 11 days]

LWN's 2020 vision

Posted Jan 9, 2020 19:11 UTC (Thu) by chfisher (subscriber, #106449) [Link]

Actually no. The two months were stuck in as July and August September was 7, October was 8, November was 9 and December was 10. Julius Ceaser wanted a month and so did Augustus.

LWN's 2020 vision

Posted Jan 1, 2020 22:49 UTC (Wed) by dskoll (subscriber, #1630) [Link]

There's always 0 of these folks in every crowd.

LWN's 2020 vision

Posted Jan 1, 2020 23:32 UTC (Wed) by geofft (subscriber, #59789) [Link] (2 responses)

ISO 8601 clearly defines this as the beginning of a new decade: https://www.iso.org/obp/ui#iso:std:iso:8601:-1:ed-1:v1:en

> 3.1.2.22
> decade
> time scale unit (3.1.1.7) of 10 calendar years (3.1.2.21), beginning with a year whose year number is divisible without remainder by ten

There's nothing to "discuss" here.

LWN's 2020 vision

Posted Jan 6, 2020 17:50 UTC (Mon) by pjones (subscriber, #31722) [Link] (1 responses)

Too bad they didn't retcon 1BCE->0CE, 2BCE->1BCE, etc. while they were at it :(

LWN's 2020 vision

Posted Jan 9, 2020 12:10 UTC (Thu) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link]

I think you mean 7BC -> 0CE ... :-)

Cheers,
Wol

LWN's 2020 vision

Posted Jan 2, 2020 2:54 UTC (Thu) by NYKevin (subscriber, #129325) [Link]

Today marks the beginning of "the 2020's." It does not mark the beginning of "the 203rd decade."

Personally, I have never heard a single person refer to "the 203rd decade," so I think it's entirely fair to call today "the start of a new decade." But maybe all of my friends are "complete innumerates" too...

LWN's 2020 vision

Posted Jan 2, 2020 3:40 UTC (Thu) by felixfix (subscriber, #242) [Link] (1 responses)

Every year, indeed every day and every second, marks the beginning of a new ten year span, aka "decade".

The problem most of us have with "the 21st century began in 2000" is that enumeration bit. If someone just said "200 is a new century", I wouldn't blink an eye. But the first century began in 1, so the 21st century has to begin 2000 years later, 2001.

It's very simple.

LWN's 2020 vision

Posted Jan 2, 2020 13:14 UTC (Thu) by bpeebles (subscriber, #70111) [Link]

It feels simpler to me to just accept that the calendar was wrong in the beginning and the first century/millennium were missing a year. And so they lasted 99/999 years respectively. Seems similar to the calendar skipping 11 days in the 1750s.

So now century and millenniums begin on the 0 and not the 1.

LWN's 2020 vision

Posted Jan 2, 2020 18:26 UTC (Thu) by jschrod (subscriber, #1646) [Link] (2 responses)

> Don't bother to discuss this

No need to discuss it.

> doing so will only brand you as a complete innumerate.

That was uncalled for.

In the same spirit: Your post branded you as a completely asocial nerd who does either not know the relevant ISO standard, or is socially challenged and doesn't know social conventions, or both.

See, I can do ad-hominem attacks almost as good as you. ;-)

Nevertheless, a happy new year. :-)

LWN's 2020 vision

Posted Jan 2, 2020 23:24 UTC (Thu) by anselm (subscriber, #2796) [Link] (1 responses)

who does either not know the relevant ISO standard

I wouldn't rely too much on that ISO standard. It says some very strange things. But it also says that it only applies to data interchange between information systems, which suggests that its applicability to the Real World™ is deliberately limited, probably simply because its authors didn't want to get drawn into exactly the quagmire that this is.

LWN's 2020 vision

Posted Jan 3, 2020 2:54 UTC (Fri) by jschrod (subscriber, #1646) [Link]

Hi Anselm,

> > who does either not know the relevant ISO standard

> I wouldn't rely too much on that ISO standard.

Sigh. I should have put more smileys in my post. :-/

I'm reasonably sure that Boudewijn wrote this as a jest. In all his conversations here and otherwise, he seems to be a very decent guy. And my reply was meant as a jest as well, teasing him.

Probably it's no coincidence that his post appeared just a day after the final answer to this no-discussion was published: https://xkcd.com/2249/ Who are we to quarrel with xkcd? I assume he was aware of that. "U can't touch this" is 90s, and "Call me" is 80s -- Boudewijn is right, there is no discussion needed. :-) :-)

Or, have I made the German failure to put the more important argument later, as Mark Twain accused us so rightfully? ;-) :-)

Happy new year!

Joachim

PS: In case you don't remember, I'm the TeX and DVI drivers guy from ITI. :-)

LWN's 2020 vision

Posted Jan 3, 2020 3:51 UTC (Fri) by nevets (subscriber, #11875) [Link]

It does mark a new decade. One must understand that the very first decade (in the year 1) only had 9 years in it ;-)

LWN's 2020 vision

Posted Jan 4, 2020 14:56 UTC (Sat) by flussence (guest, #85566) [Link]

> Don't bother to discuss this; doing so will only brand you as a complete innumerate.

Happy new decade to KDE 5 ;)

LWN's 2020 vision

Posted Jan 9, 2020 5:47 UTC (Thu) by lysse (guest, #3190) [Link]

I'm always taken aback by how insistent certain people will become that the completely arbitrary demarcation they favour is the only possible correct completely arbitrary demarcation.