NaN stands for Not a Number. to simplify very briefly (and not accurate at all), when defining a standard for representing fractional values using binary digits in computers they systematically assigned natural numbers in a range of values to
some fractional numbers. some of the possible natural numbers for reasons not worth talking about were unused, so they were designated as NaNs, and the value of the NaN itself is supposed to tell you what went wrong in your calculations to get a NaN. obviously if you use a NaN in an arithmetic operation the result is also Not a Number and that’s what the meme is referring to.
i think the real explanation is simpler and more understandable.
NaN is what you get when you do something illegal like dividing by zero. There is no answer, but the operation has to result in something. So it gives you NaN, because the result is literally not a number
You are not logged in. However you can subscribe from another Fediverse account, for example Lemmy or Mastodon. To do this, paste the following into the search field of your instance: !programmerhumor@lemmy.ml
Post funny things about programming here! (Or just rant about your favourite programming language.)
Rules:
Posts must be relevant to programming, programmers, or computer science.
No NSFW content.
Jokes must be in good taste. No hate speech, bigotry, etc.
eli5?
NaN stands for Not a Number. to simplify very briefly (and not accurate at all), when defining a standard for representing fractional values using binary digits in computers they systematically assigned natural numbers in a range of values to some fractional numbers. some of the possible natural numbers for reasons not worth talking about were unused, so they were designated as NaNs, and the value of the NaN itself is supposed to tell you what went wrong in your calculations to get a NaN. obviously if you use a NaN in an arithmetic operation the result is also Not a Number and that’s what the meme is referring to.
i think the real explanation is simpler and more understandable.
NaN is what you get when you do something illegal like dividing by zero. There is no answer, but the operation has to result in something. So it gives you NaN, because the result is literally not a number
deleted by creator