Endianness refers to the order in which a computer stores the bytes of a multi-byte data type, like how Instagram stores your photos in the order of most to least likely to be accidentally shared with your boss. It's a thrilling concept that's sure to come up at your next dinner party, right after you finish discussing the intricacies of cache coherency protocols.

How to use it in a sentence

• "I was up all night debugging a nasty endianness issue, only to realize I had accidentally set my compiler to 'big-endian' mode instead of 'little-endian' like a total noob."

• "I told the new hire to be careful with endianness when sending data between systems, but they just looked at me like I was speaking Klingon and went back to playing Fortnite."

If you actually want to learn more...

• Endianness Explained with an Egg - Gustavo Duarte: A delightful and humorous explanation of endianness using the analogy of cracking an egg. Who knew low-level computing concepts could be so eggciting?

• On Holy Wars and a Plea for Peace - Danny Cohen: The classic paper that introduced the terms "big-endian" and "little-endian" to the world of computing. A must-read for anyone who wants to impress their colleagues with obscure historical references.

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