I still don’t know if it goes ground floor, second floor or ground floor, first floor, second floor

  • XEAL@lemm.ee
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    7 months ago

    I agree with the UK one as in Spain we do pretty much the same.

    • eezeebee@lemmy.ca
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      7 months ago

      My North American mind cannot comprehend the UK version.

      “First” floor implies it is the first one. Why does the ground floor get special treatment?

      And the fourth floor, it’s the fourth one because there are four of them.

      • HobbitFoot @thelemmy.club
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        7 months ago

        Other countries treat the question more as “how many floors from the ground are you?” than what you’re used to. After all, what floor is 0?

        • stoicmaverick@lemmy.world
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          7 months ago

          My inner computer scientist likes this framing, and understands its logic. My inner, and much less influential human being, hates it a lot AF.

          • yoevli@lemmy.world
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            7 months ago

            Even in the CS world, ordinal phrases are still 1-indexed (e.g. the first element of an array vs element 0).

        • Anamnesis@lemmy.world
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          7 months ago

          But in the US way, you’re only one floor from the ground on the first floor. 0 isn’t a floor, it’s literally the ground we put the first floor on.

        • Sethayy@sh.itjust.works
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          7 months ago

          So youre telling me you have 3 cookies in front of you, you’d call them the zeroth, first and second cookies?

          Someone asks what cookie youre on and you say second having already eaten 2.5?

          • xmunk@sh.itjust.works
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            7 months ago

            I am aghast that you assume I use floats anywhere in my code. The cookie has an eaten flag and in one tick it goes from false to true. If you want partial cookie eating tracking we can plan a future update.

        • GlendatheGayWitch@lemmy.world
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          7 months ago

          How’d y’all communicate with builders? Do you say this building has 0 floors to say that it’s si gle story and say that it has 1 floor to mean that it’s 2-story?

      • RozhkiNozhki@lemmy.world
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        7 months ago

        Iirc it used to be that the ground floor was semi-basement, with windows at the ground level hence the name.

      • WIZARD POPE💫@lemmy.world
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        7 months ago

        Well in my native language the word for ground floor would translate to something like “next to ground” and above that would be first floor which would be “above ceiling” in direct translation

      • Nibodhika@lemmy.world
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        7 months ago

        Because it has a special place, i.e. it’s leveled with the ground, so anything above it you need to climb up, anything below it you need to climb down.

        Think of it this way, floor is a synonym with level, if I asked you to tell me which level the ground is at the only logical answer is 0, if you say the ground is at level 1 that implies that the first basement is level 0 which sounds ridiculous.

        If you’re in an elevator that has the numbers from -5 to 15, where is the only logical place for the ground to be at?

        • dream_weasel@sh.itjust.works
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          7 months ago

          So to preface this, it’s all arbitrary so there isn’t a right or wrong as long as it’s consistent.

          The question might be better phrased this way: are we numbering distance or counting spaces?

          If the year is 2024, what century is it? How about if the year is 700? How about if the year is "-700” (700 BCE)? Now which century is the zero century? 🤔 It doesn’t make sense to ask I don’t think.

          So really the US System counts the spaces up, then the spaces down as stories. Ground is the same as 1, and Basement is same as -1. I have never ever seen a building (or elevator) with a number line in it or with negative numbers. NOW if you put altitude in the elevator in, say, 10ft increments or so, I would have no choice but to agree with your strange European ways.

          No storey is special, no one is special.

    • Mwalimu@baraza.africa
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      7 months ago

      It would be more complex if the US didn’t believe in 13th floor story and UK did. Even though both would have 14th floor on the same level from the ground, there is a lot that would be missed if you only elevated straight from the parking basement to your 14th floor.

    • lud@lemm.ee
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      7 months ago

      Imo the first floor should be the ground floor and the floor above that is the second floor.

        • lud@lemm.ee
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          7 months ago

          I’m pretty sure that format or where the first floor is labeled “1” is the most common where I live.

          Labeling the second floor the first floor is frankly insane.

          Edit: or maybe we do call the second floor the first floor. Not sure. Still stupid though but it’s not as stupid in my language because we don’t say “floor” but if you’re going to say floor you should count the actual floors.

          • frazorth@feddit.uk
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            7 months ago

            Not stupid in the slightest.

            Basement -1

            Ground 0

            First floor 1

            Second floor 2

            It makes sense to me, but it’s also what I’m used to.

            • lud@lemm.ee
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              7 months ago

              The ground floor has the first floor in the building though.