A photo of a cake with 8 candles in a row. The first and fifth candle from the right are lit. The caption reads "Happy 17th Birthday"
this post was submitted on 25 Feb 2026
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Who counts from right to left?
Is this image mirrored?
You will be surprised to hear that this is how we read decimal numbers too
The people saying right to left is normal are either Australian or mirror universe folks.
At least I thought that until I looked up ascii conversations and then just random converters .... How have I forgotten this? The pic is right...
Even in decimal, the most-significant digit is to the left. Binary in text form is no exception to this.
Unless we are talking little-endian, which would start with the least-significant bit.
Binary exists in both big-endian and little-endian. In other words, both directions can be valid.
Ya, but we pretty much always write it with most significant on the left. The endianness is more to do with the order transmitted when serialized. Or are there cases where people actually write it backwards?
Binary is always right to left? I've never seen it written left to right at least.
Now that you mention it it is pretty fucky, but in every textbook thats tried to teach me counting in binary its gone from right to left.
It's not. Numbers are arranged (both binary and base 10) with the most significant digit on the left.
Whether you read the number from left to right or right to left is irrelevant and you can choose whichever one you want.
But it is completely consistent with base 10 (normal numbers).
Same here. University told me the lowest bit is on the right, the highest on the left. Never questioned it.
In kindergarten I was taught when reading the number 123, the lowest digit is on the right, and the highest on the left. Never questioned it either.
There are 3 leading "zeros"