Nitpick: I'm guessing you mean 10,000% and English isn't your native language. In English the period "." is a decimal separator, not a thousands separator, so 10.000% means 10%.
EDIT: Holy cow, at least four downvotes so far. I hope the downvotes are for nitpicking and not out of disagreement. As cakemuncher seems to disagree (which doesn't mean they downvoted) this seems like a great learning opportunity about decimal separators and non-native speakers:
The parent is most likely German (the example code uses German so that usually means Germany, Austria or Switzerland) which uses the comma as decimal separator and period as thousands separator. I'm German too, so I'm sensitized to this mistake.
The US, the UK, New Zealand, Australia and English-speaking Canada all use the dot as decimal mark. South Africa is the only major English speaking country using a comma instead, but they use a space as thousands separator rather than a period.
The parent clearly intended "10.000%" to be read as "ten thousand percent" so that leaves the following list of countries which according to Wikipedia use a comma as thousands separator:
Argentina, Austria, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Brazil, Chile, Croatia, Denmark, Germany, Greece, Indonesia, Italy, Netherlands (currency), Portugal, Romania, Russia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden (not recommended), Turkey
Exactly zero of these countries are predominantly English speaking. So in other words, in English 10.000% means ten percent (with a precision of three digits after the decimal point), not ten thousand percent.
Didn't downvote or anything, but come on .. we all know what he meant. This thread is not the place for a "a great learning opportunity about decimal separators and non-native speakers".
Why.. not? I mean, perhaps it adds too much noise to normal threads, but it feels to me you're explaining why we shouldn't be learning random facts here. Which is odd, because I appreciate learning, doubly so because I don't often seek it out.
Stopping someone mid conversation to correct grammar might be rude or whatever in person, mainly due to the "live" nature of in-person conversation. In a forum-like conversation however; it seems quite the opposite to me.
Well, not the OP, but for me, I clicked a link hoping to see some discussion about Javascript, and the first thread from the top is arguing about whether Number Separators of the World is a sensible topic of discussion. I mean, part of what I enjoy about HN is entertaining digression, but this may as well be an argument about varying aftermarket car part quality, as far as relevance is concerned.
And yes, I am adding to the noise; far too late now. How do you feel about car part quality?
I didn't know what he meant, and I am a dual national with a country that uses comma decimal delineation.
The problem is that an hour investment for a 10% increase in productivity would be a great thing. 10,000% is unvarnished hyperbole, so my brain interpreted as the reasonable statement.
Sure, eventually. But I had to parse that sentence three times to figure out whether he meant 10% or 10,000%. I'm a non-native speaker from Germany myself so I'm doubly careful about reading commas and periods in figures like that correctly. Adding extra decimals for emphasis isn't exactly uncommon.
I only expanded my comment because of the downvotes. I actually made sure to keep it short and explicitly mark it as "nitpicky" (i.e. unimportant to the greater discussion) exactly for the reason you state.
Having your mistake corrected can be educational even when you were understood. In the future, inanother context, the same mistake could result in confusion.
Well since we're all being pedantic, OP means "Original Poster" which is the person who started the thread (page, not this particular thread, which you did start).
I think that the meaning of OP depends on context. In general, you're correct. But cel1ne can be reasonably be referred to as the OP in our convo, since our discussion really doesn't have anything to do with the content submitted by the Original Poster of the whole page.
I'm always tempted to downvote people who edit their comments, complaining about downvotes or demanding explanations.
You'll see this behavior occasionally on any "gamified" discussion forum. But HN culture is the most extreme about this, you see it in every other thread.
* People downvote grammar-nitpicks, and "Actuallllly..."-style smarmy corrections that are more about making the speaker feel superior than genuinely helping the recipient.
* They downvote criticisms of programming languages that are currently popular here.
* They downvote libertarian political views in threads where the liberals are dominant, and then paradoxically they downvote liberal views in the next thread where the libertarians are dominating. Human nature just like a winner.
* They downvote low-quality additions such as, "This!".
* They will almost certainly downvote this comment, because it's negative in tone and speaks to HN culture, which generally doesn't go over well.
Gamification of conversation can be harmful to your mental well-being. None of these "imaginary Internet points" mean anything. Try not to troll. Otherwise, just speak your truth and take any downvotes like an adult.
The problem is downvotes mean different things to different people. IMO a point based system for comments particularly one with downvoting is a sort of an aggressive one that may steer certain folks away when really good community shouldn't. It might even create a bad culture and attract hyper aggressive and deter more passive folks. There are other gamification systems that don't allow downvotes (e.g. Quora) which I think are better.
When I have been downvoted in the past for opinion things I'm immediately concerned that I have offended someone. It actually is painful not to know... did I say something factually wrong... is my comment being misinterpreted... am I coming off as offensive?
I'm sorry I'm not an "adult" but I need explanation as to why a comment is incorrect or why you might disagree otherwise I'm not going to sugar coat... it doesn't feel good to be downvoted and I'm sure others feel the same.
> I'm always tempted to downvote people who edit their comments, complaining about downvotes or demanding explanations.
Normally that happens because complaining about downvotes is in the guidelines. "Please resist commenting about being downvoted. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading." Personally I don't feel the need to police it, but the guidelines are clear.
> * They will almost certainly downvote this comment
Also in the guidelines: "Please don't bait other users by inviting them to downvote you or proclaim that you expect to get downvoted." You may get downvoted for ignoring the guidelines, rather than because of the negativity or speaking to culture.
> Gamification of conversation can be harmful to your mental well-being.
This is an interesting thought! I'd tend to agree, though I just stared to wonder if getting myself into arguments on Internet forums are the primary factor, and the gamification is secondary. Either way, my first thought is why participate in the gaming part if it's bad? I've never downvoted on HN yet, in part because getting downvotes makes me feel bad, so I don't like to inflict that on others. In part because they're unnecessary, I can upvote the things I like to make them bubble up, and I can use the [-] button to ignore threads I don't like. Anyway, "try not to troll" I agree with wholeheartedly, that's the main thing I learned during the period that I didn't have downvote privilege, and I imagine that was the intent.
That's why I made sure not to complain. I wasn't particularly angry, mostly just wondering what motivated people to downvote and expanding on my original comment based on the assumption that people actually disagreed or weren't aware of how decimal points work in different languages.
This issue can be avoided by following the ISO standards ISO-31 and ISO-80000-1. Under these grouping is done by separating groups by a small space (U+2009, THIN SPACE, is usually used, I believe). If there is a period or comma in the number, it is then unambiguously the decimal separator.
We should even already be used to that style, because those are the standards that cover how SI units are supposed to be written.
So just write it as 10 000% and everyone should be happy.
You'll love Apple's smart new "Touch Space Bar", which lets you continuously adjust the width, style and semantics of Unicode spaces from zero width, hair thin, various EM&ENs, to obesely fat, pregnant pause, breaking, non-breaking, numeric, oghamic, figure, ideographic, word, punctuation, visible, ␠ symbols, mathematical, poetic, scientific, pseudo-scientific, streaming, auto-repeat, lossless and lossy compression, deep, personal, safe, digital rights management, Mongolian vowel separators [1], etc, simply by swiping, tapping, crossing and snapping your fingers, while watching the mesmerizing colorful blinking graphical feedback provided by applications supporting the NSTouchSpaceBar API.
Microsoft also has a dog in the space race: see their "Space Characters Design Standards". [2]
OK, some do in this table, but I'm not sure how accurate it is.
It lists my country as one of those countries, and we definitely don't use space as thousands separator (we use period).
Perhaps what the table shows is just that this is the "SI style", and assumes that countries whose scientists and units follow the SI also follow this way of thousands separators, but we don't. We just use the SI units -- and even our scientists use period for the separator.
When I read 10.000%, I though he was being reasonably realistic about the magnitude of his increase in productivity (a 10% increase is great, nothing to scoff at), but wildly exaggerating about the precision by which he measured his productivity, to three significant figures!
But if you're German, isn't that the kind of hyperbole you most appreciate, since you love making precise measurements, no matter their magnitude? ;)
> Exactly zero of these countries are predominantly English speaking. So in other words, in English 10.000% means ten percent (with a precision of three digits after the decimal point), not ten thousand percent.
I posed a question about this a week or so ago,and got some interesting responses.[1] This one might be illuminating:
In mainland Europe we only use the metric system, even when speaking or writing English.
Also it is common to stick to the comma as decimal separator and dot as thousands separator when writing English. This convention is independent of the language used.
Same goes for date notation, dd-mm-yyyy is used (almost) always.
In Windows or Linux for example you can select the English language with Dutch localisation. It's used by almost all software developers I know.
So the answer is that countries that use a period as a thousands separator may by convention happen to continue doing so when using English. Whether you think this is appropriate is likely tied to whether you think localization applies irrespective to language or not.
I think you misread the thread you're responding to.
The OP used a comma as decimal point, not to as a thousands separator. GP likely meant they know of no English speaking country that uses the comma as decimal point. Your example doesn't contradict or add to that.
EDIT: Holy cow, at least four downvotes so far. I hope the downvotes are for nitpicking and not out of disagreement. As cakemuncher seems to disagree (which doesn't mean they downvoted) this seems like a great learning opportunity about decimal separators and non-native speakers:
The parent is most likely German (the example code uses German so that usually means Germany, Austria or Switzerland) which uses the comma as decimal separator and period as thousands separator. I'm German too, so I'm sensitized to this mistake.
Here's the Wikipedia article for reference: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decimal_mark
The US, the UK, New Zealand, Australia and English-speaking Canada all use the dot as decimal mark. South Africa is the only major English speaking country using a comma instead, but they use a space as thousands separator rather than a period.
The parent clearly intended "10.000%" to be read as "ten thousand percent" so that leaves the following list of countries which according to Wikipedia use a comma as thousands separator:
Argentina, Austria, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Brazil, Chile, Croatia, Denmark, Germany, Greece, Indonesia, Italy, Netherlands (currency), Portugal, Romania, Russia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden (not recommended), Turkey
Exactly zero of these countries are predominantly English speaking. So in other words, in English 10.000% means ten percent (with a precision of three digits after the decimal point), not ten thousand percent.