Numbers are hard. I just almost accidentally sent 33k€ to someone via bank transfer, because the banking website interpreted 334.90 as 33490,00. 😬 This is germany, so it wants a comma, not a dot …

@movq@www.uninformativ.de The dot is the thousands separator, so I’m surprised that it did not interpret it as €334,900.00. Luckily, you caught it in time! :-)

@movq@www.uninformativ.de that would have never worked for me. I don’t have that kind of money in a bank account. 😂

We should standardise numerical notations, at least the nations using the Arabic numerals. Spain also uses the period as the thousands separator. For legibility sake, commas and periods make sense, like €3,500.25, for example. That’s three thousand five hundred Euros, and 25 Euro cents. But this should also work: €3500.25.

It makes little sense that €334.90 gets interpreted as €33490 (or €33,490). 🤯

@bender@twtxt.net I noticed that I can’t type a . directly. Yesterday, I pasted the number from an email (because why would I type it and probably make a mistake in the process?), so it looks like it simply stripped the dot entirely …

@lyse@lyse.isobeef.org Dots as thousands separators are the most confusing thing to me. 🥴 I like '. Basically, anything at the bottom should be a decimal point and anything at the top a thousands separator.

@movq@www.uninformativ.de Yeah, the Swiss and C++ programmers use apostrophes. :-) My grandpa had an electronic desk calculator that also used some kind of apostrophes as the thousands separator on its cool display. Maybe it consisted of Nixie tubes, can’t remember anymore.

I think non-breaking spaces are preferred nowadays to avoid the confusion.