You know how some languages write left-to-right, and some rught-to-left? Endianness is that, for numbers.
Or another analogy is dates: 2025/12/31 is big endian, 31/12/2025 is little endian. And 12/31/2025 is middle endian. Which makes no sense at all because the middle is, by definition, not an end.
I stand corrected. No idea what I was reading (several years ago), but whatever it was made it seem way more complicated. Maybe it was just an explanation from somebody who didn’t know.
Big Endian Little Endian:
"1010" "1010"
|||| ||||
[1248] [8421]
(sum the numbers
corresponding to a 1)
1+4=5 8+2=10
Depending on whether the order of binary comes from the left (Big Endian) or from the right (Little Endian), the binary number of “1010” can equal 5 or 10
(My original comment was buzzword nonsense though)
Ouch. I had to learn endianness once to solve a real life serialization bug. It sucked. I learned it for just long enough to correct the code for the corner cases involves, and then slept and forgot everything about it.
Tried reading about endianness once. Pretty sure it can’t be dumbed down enough for my brain.
You know how some languages write left-to-right, and some rught-to-left? Endianness is that, for numbers.
Or another analogy is dates: 2025/12/31 is big endian, 31/12/2025 is little endian. And 12/31/2025 is middle endian. Which makes no sense at all because the middle is, by definition, not an end.
I stand corrected. No idea what I was reading (several years ago), but whatever it was made it seem way more complicated. Maybe it was just an explanation from somebody who didn’t know.
Depending on whether the order of binary comes from the left (Big Endian) or from the right (Little Endian), the binary number of “1010” can equal 5 or 10
(My original comment was buzzword nonsense though)
Ouch. I had to learn endianness once to solve a real life serialization bug. It sucked. I learned it for just long enough to correct the code for the corner cases involves, and then slept and forgot everything about it.