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.
Comment on How many floors are under an apartment on the second floor? (No basement)
XEAL@lemm.ee 2 months ago
I agree with the UK one as in Spain we do pretty much the same. Image
eezeebee@lemmy.ca 2 months ago
HobbitFoot@thelemmy.club 2 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 2 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 2 months ago
Even in the CS world, ordinal phrases are still 1-indexed (e.g. the first element of an array vs element 0).
AnUnusualRelic@lemmy.world 2 months ago
The one where it says 0 on the elevator?
Anamnesis@lemmy.world 2 months ago
But I’m 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.
NeatNit@discuss.tchncs.de 2 months ago
To reach the 2nd floor you need to go up 2 floors
To reach the 1st floor you need to go up 1 floor
If you go up 0 floors, you’re on floor 0 - aka the ground floor.
eezeebee@lemmy.ca 2 months ago
The ground floor is still a floor of the building, and it’s the first one you encounter. To me they are interchangeable.
NeatNit@discuss.tchncs.de 2 months ago
Alright, fair point. Clearly there are merits to both systems (see other answers). If there’s a floor -1 and a floor 1 I’d expect there to be a floor 0 between them, and I don’t think anyone would propose that floor 0 would have you climb down from street level to reach. That’s why it makes sense to have ground floor at 0 to me.
It also might help to call them floor 1, floor 2 etc. instead of first floor, second floor, etc… It’s kind of like how the 20th century is the one going 19xx. So the 20th floor being floor 19 isn’t too farfetched.
What do you mean I’m overthinking this?!
xmunk@sh.itjust.works 2 months ago
Arrays are indexed from zero - the UK has the only correct naming approach.
Sethayy@sh.itjust.works 2 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 2 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 2 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 2 months ago
Iirc it used to be that the ground floor was semi-basement, with windows at the ground level hence the name.
FireTower@lemmy.world 2 months ago
In my head for them ground level is just dirt and doesn’t have a proper floor.
Wizard_Pope@lemmy.world 2 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 2 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 2 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.
lud@lemm.ee 2 months ago
Imo the first floor should be the ground floor and the floor above that is the second floor.
frazorth@feddit.uk 2 months ago
It’s okay to be wrong.
lud@lemm.ee 2 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.
frazorth@feddit.uk 2 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.
mwalimu@baraza.africa 2 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.
whotookkarl@lemmy.world 2 months ago
0 index versus 1 index, the classic counting collections conundrum.