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Roman numerals were awful.
There's nothing particularly special about 10 as a base, though. It is most likely because we have 10 fingers.
The problem with Roman Numerals is that it is an inconsistent implementation.
You could easily have a base 12. You just need 12 numerals.
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I've thought this through before, but only within a Day's context (because a day is based on the rotation of the earth and a year is based on the revolution of the earth around the sun, you CAN'T have anything other than 365.25 (approximately) days in a year).
But for a day, if you have 100 units in the day, each would be very close to 15 minutes of our current measurement (14 minutes, 24 seconds). Since there are 100 in a day, they would be centidays. Since that term sounds horrible there would probably need to be something else to call them - maybe "hours" would just be redefined? If you divide each of those centidays/hours into 1000 smaller units, those would be fairly close to 1 second each (0.864 seconds) and could be called millihours (or maybe still "seconds" for each of use). Having units of time similar in duration to what we're comfortable with would make it easier to get buy-in.
All of that is moot, though, because almost all computer software would have to be rewritten. If someone had come up with this BEFORE computers I think it would have stood a better chance.
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but we own the programming language community. LOL
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Kirk 10389821 wrote: It is NO WONDER we are dead last in math 
No, it's not "math", it's "maths"
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xiecsuk wrote: No, it's not "math", it's "maths"
And there goes the English scores...
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When you walk into a multi-storied building from street level, what is the first floor you enter? (Hint: the answer is in the question.) See? We 'Merkans have some logic to our madness.
If you think 'goto' is evil, try writing an Assembly program without JMP.
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The ground floor, obviously! The first floor above that is the "first floor", etc. Duh! 
- I would love to change the world, but they won’t give me the source code.
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I guess it depends what you define as "floor" I guess.
Here in Canada (ex-pat Brit here) there are inconsistent implementations.
I have seen:
1) Lobby, First floor, ...
2) Lobby, second floor, ...
3) Mezzanine, first floor, ...
And of course it is quite common to miss floor 13, as I guess some consider 13 unlucky.
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The university I went to had the basement as floor 1, the ground level floor as 2 and so on.
I wonder what they do at the Pentagon[^]; it has 5 floors above ground and two basement levels.
There are a lot of office buildings and missile silos that have numerous basement levels.
I'm retired. There's a nap for that...
- Harvey
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From Wikipedia:
Quote: Floors in the Pentagon are lettered "B" for Basement and "M" for Mezzanine, both of which are below ground level. The concourse is located on the second floor at the Metro entrance. Above ground floors are numbered 1 to 5.
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The alien artifacts are in area 51, not the pentagon. They were in the pentagon, but then the "plane" hit the building ...
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> ... and two basement levels.
Plus all the ones containing the alien artifacts....
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Yes, the ground floor is the first floor. I really don't see the problem.
By the way, I've seen it both ways in America. Some buildings have a G for ground, and 1 for the floor above it. Others just have 1 for ground floors.
The real question is, should there be a 13th floor? Or should it skip from 12 to 14? 
If you think 'goto' is evil, try writing an Assembly program without JMP.
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But we fix that by skipping the 13th floor. 
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0 is ground level. A floor is above ground level, and anything else is wrong.
If 1 was ground floor, 0 would be in the ground. Then it would stop making sense to even count negative.
Bastard Programmer from Hell 
If you can't read my code, try converting it here[^]
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Over here the floor at ground level is the first floor. It does make sense in a way, since the highest floor has a number equal to the total number of floors. The ones below the ground are B1, B2 etc, increasing downwards.
My point was that kids don't usually count from zero (unless they were C programmers in a previous incarnation?)
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Indivara wrote: The ones below the ground are B1, B2 etc, increasing downwards.
As does any modern hospital. I was wondering why there was a sudden need of a character-prefix.
Where do the buttons prefixed with C lead to?
Indivara wrote: My point was that kids don't usually count from zero (unless they were C programmers in a previous incarnation?)
It is not a point of from "where" to start counting, as to count "what is". Youngest is right.
Go stand outside. That's 0 floors. You are at "level 0". Yes, build a floor, we'll call that one. Dig, and we'll call it -1. The latter is counting, but the first is merely a statement of what is if you go outside - 0 floors!
Bastard Programmer from Hell
If you can't read my code, try converting it here[^]
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Eddy Vluggen wrote: Where do the buttons prefixed with C lead to?
An alternate dimension.
Bad command or file name. Bad, bad command! Sit! Stay! Staaaay...
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Or the crematorium?? But then that is an alternate dimension!!
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Actually you'd enter the 'Twilight Zone'.
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The cellars? Much more gothic than the basements.
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Eddy Vluggen wrote: Where do the buttons prefixed with C lead to?
The Coffee machines, of course.
I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!
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It gets worse actually
Mezzanine is M.
Roof is R or RF.
Basement is B or BF when only one level is underground.
Platform is P, except when it is Parking.
Sometimes the car park floors are closer together and get separate numbers P1 onwards, which correspond to different floor numbers of the building.
And sometimes they are labelled in Japanese, making a ride on the elevator more adventurous.
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Too confusing, I'll be taking the stairs.
Bastard Programmer from Hell
If you can't read my code, try converting it here[^]
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