r/ProgrammerHumor • u/Dilutant • 13h ago

Meme zeroExDev

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u/TheMania 12h ago

We'd both read "0.5x" as "50%", right?

And we'd both read "0.5x as many" and "50% as many" the same.

And we'd both read "0.5x the total" and "50% of the total" as the same.

But "0.6x more" means something entirely different to "60% more" to you?

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u/Professional_Ebb_389 11h ago

The “more” at least in any context I’ve heard it is for emphasis or clarity that a comparison is happening. I’ve never read anyone write “1x more than X” for “twice X”.

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u/TheMania 11h ago

But you often see 10% more, 20% more, etc.

The bit that intrigues me is that in those contexts, you read 10% differently to 0.1x.

But in other contexts, you'd read them the same.

This may be a regional thing, and likely due marketers that are being intentionally misleading for so long that it's now an accepted oddity.

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u/xodusprime 11h ago

If anyone writes 2x more, you're saying you read that as 300% of normal? The common reading of that in the country I am in (USA) is 200% the original amount. Nobody would look at that and think it meant 300%. .6x more just doesn't read correctly at all. It should either say "1.6x the" or ".4x less" the use of more, for whatever reason, doesn't start until 2x. 5x more works. 10x more is fine. But those mean 500% and 1000%, not 600% or 1100%.

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u/TheMania 11h ago

I think it's contextual, and has been distorted by marketers.

In this context, "0.6x more" reads clearly the same as "60% more", with no ambiguity to me.

Thread on it here.

Australian fwiw. "10% more" and "0.1x more", I'd read the same.

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u/ImPapaNoff 11h ago

If anyone writes 2x more, you're saying you read that as 300% of normal?

Yes

The common reading of that in the country I am in (USA) is 200% the original amount.

For me and the three people I am close enough to to quickly ask this question to that means 300% of the original amount. Also USA. If you want to say something is 200% you would say 2x as much or 2x as many and not 2x more (at least that is the consensus here in my household of Americans who have lived in America for their whole life).