Probably a trivial question, but here goes:
I've got a family member with a background in telecommunications and IT. One day, when I wrote binary code right-to-left, he corrected me and insisted that binary is to be written from left-to-right, stating that the LSD (Least Significant Digit) is the first one from left. But I just don't get it. Every website I've ever been to, including several articles, Wikipedia.org and a number of youtube videos, all state that binary is to be read/written from right-to-left.
As such, my stance is that the example number "5" is to be written as "00000101" and not as "10100000". His stance is opposite. Now, I'm pretty certain that I'm right about this, because I've seen it demonstrated from several sources and that he's simply wrong for whatever reason. But he does have a much stronger background than myself. So I'm thinking that there must be some reason that he insists the way he does?
Immediately, I'm thinking that he's right about the machine reading it all from left-to-right. But who cares about the machine, no offence to HAL9000 - we humans write and count the binary code from right-to-left (just like the decimal system).
Could anyone here please clarify this once and for all? When does binary read from right-to-left, and when does it read from left-to-right?!! Thanks in advance.