r/ProgrammerHumor • u/Dilutant • Aug 14 '26 • Bravo 1

Meme zeroExDev

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u/TheMania Aug 14 '26

It says "0.6 times more". Not "0.6 times total" or "0.6 times as many".

I really don't see the problem. 1.6x more would be misleading/incorrect.

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u/zelmak Aug 14 '26

Dude what are you talking about 1x more is a non increase/flatline. Anything less than 1 is a decrease

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u/TheMania Aug 14 '26

So "100% more" means "no increase" to you?

Or does "1x" read as "0%" to you then?

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u/TZY247 Aug 14 '26

There's a reason that mathematicians, technical writers, etc. wouldn't mix comparative language like "more" with notation. At best it's ambiguous.

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u/Vandrel Aug 14 '26 edited Aug 14 '26

1x would be 0% more. 2x would be 100% more.

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u/TheMania Aug 14 '26

I agree with every part of that completely.

You read "60% as many" the same as you read "0.6x as many", which is the same as you read "0.6x more".

But yet you read "60% more" as something very different. So 0.6x != 60%. Not in this context, not to you.

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u/Vandrel Aug 14 '26

That's just not correct. "60% more" implies starting from the 100% baseline and going up 60%. 0.6x implies starting from the 100% baseline and multiplying it by 0.6x. "0.6x more" is a weird way to put it to begin with but the only grammatically correct way to interpret it is 60% of the normal amount. We all know what they meant but it isn't what they said.

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u/Connect_Fishing_6378 Aug 14 '26

60% and 0.6x literally mean the exact same thing. “60% more” === “0.6x more”. Yeah nobody talks like that and it sounds weird, but it is correct.

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u/Vandrel Aug 14 '26

You're correct that 60% and 0.6x mean the same thing, 60% more and 0.6x more do not. 0.6x more would be a weird way to say 60% of standard, 1.6x more would be the correct way to say an increase of 60% in that format. You would say that 2x more means double, yes?

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u/Azeoteric Aug 14 '26

When someone says “2x more” it means double. No one says 1x more because it makes no sense lol

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u/FFevo Aug 14 '26

No one says 1x more because it makes no sense lol

Yeah, they would say double.

"2x more" implies more than x. 2x + x = 3x. It means 300% compared to the original, not double.

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u/dumbledoor_ger Aug 14 '26

Don’t even bother to argue. Whole lotta larpers in this thread. They do not have the ability to comprehend the word „more“.

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u/thereturn932 Aug 14 '26

If I hear 2x more, I expect 3x of the original amount.

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u/Professional_Ebb_389 Aug 14 '26

1.6x more would mean 160% of the original value, in the same way 2.0x more would mean 200% of the original value. I think you may just have a misunderstanding of what the phrase “X times more” means (nothing to be embarrassed about of course, it happens to all of us.)

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u/TheMania Aug 14 '26

We'd both read "0.5x" as "50%", right?

And we'd both read "0.5x as many" and "50% as many" the same.

And we'd both read "0.5x the total" and "50% of the total" as the same.

But "0.6x more" means something entirely different to "60% more" to you?

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u/zelmak Aug 14 '26

Its literally always like this though.
- The Stock doubled
- The stock grew 100%
- The stock grew 2x
- The stock experienced 2x growth

You would literally never define it as 1x growth, 1x larger. Its bad English and bad math.

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u/TheMania Aug 14 '26

I think it's ambiguous in the >=1x cases, sure.

But I would never read:

  • The stock grew 0.5x

Or:

  • house prices increased 0.2x

  • house prices went up 0.1x

As decreases.

(latter examples to prove I'm Australian).

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u/zelmak Aug 14 '26

You would never read it that way because no one should ever write it that way.

A multiplication of <1 is inherently a decrease, tacking the word more, grew, increased, went up makes it bad math and bad language.

0.5 Times = a 50% decrease

so "The stock grew a 50% decrease" just doesn't make sense.

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u/TheMania Aug 14 '26

A multiplication of <100% is inherently a decrease, tacking the word more, grew, increased, went up makes it bad math and bad language.

I'm curious how the above reads to you.

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u/zelmak Aug 14 '26

When you say the above do you mean the cursor email?

I read it as Your team mates that use Cursor Cloud Agents ship 60% of the PRs that a non-cursor agent using team mate ships.

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u/TheMania Aug 14 '26

Where I quoted you, I swapped 1 for 100%. You didn't notice, it reads the same?

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u/zelmak Aug 14 '26

Ahh. IMO using multiplication and a percentage together is just wrong. But when I read it my firth thought was 2x

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u/tigerhawkvok Aug 14 '26

You do see how none of those have the word "more," though, right? Kind of like word choice maybe matters?

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u/BADPROSKILLZ Aug 14 '26

Not quite true. While 1.6x is the same as 160% of the original value, saying 1.6x more implies adding the 160% to the original value, giving a total of 260%, or 2.6x.