really wish folks would stop making up sensationalistic contrarian stories like this no, we don't write numbers "backwards" the Arabs got the numbers from India, from LTR scripts that used numbers the same way we do (LTR big-endian)
Tim Sweeney
 @TimSweeneyEpic
7 Nov 2019
We write numbers backwards as a result of importing right-to-left Arabic numbers into left-to-right Latin writing without reversing them. Thus the need to right-justify columns of numbers to have their place values align, and perform addition right-to-left.
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it's ridiculous to suggest that we imported them backwards and that doing them the other way would make it easier: when you say that it's immediately obvious to me that you've never actually USED an RTL script with LTR big-endian numbers: they have a far worse problem
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having to right justify arithmetic is no big deal. having to somewhat predict the space necessary to write a number, is. When you write numbers in a sentence in Arabic you have to either write the number little-first, or you predict the space you need, jump ahead, and write back
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unless your language reads out numbers as little-endian, writing the number little-first is confusing
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this isn't the first time i've seen this bad take from computer people who clearly don't actually read the scripts they're talking about
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note that some forms of Arabic do read numbers little-endian, so it all works out in the end for them, but most European languages read them big endian (one hundred fifty five, not five fifty one hundred)
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Replying to @ManishEarth
German and Yiddish have an annoying mixed endianness where they put the tens after the ones...

Nov 7, 2019 · 10:08 PM UTC

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Replying to @davidbaron
right, Marathi does too, but your brain can look at two or three digit things atomically, this isn't true for large numbers. it takes effort to reverse (whereas even though Marathi writes 45 as "five-forty" i think of it as an atomic word for 45)
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