Guy Steele on Base Ten and Base Two

If I could change one thing—this is going to sound stupid—but if I could go back in time and change one thing, I might try to interest some early preliterate people in not ! using their thumbs when they count It could have been the Standard, and it would have made a whole lot of things easier in the modem era. On the other hand, we have learned a lot from the struggle with the incompatibility of base-ten with powers of two.