Always can't separate these guys: ascending and descending! Are there good examples?

Posted by mystify on Stack Overflow See other posts from Stack Overflow or by mystify
Published on 2010-06-08T15:35:03Z Indexed on 2010/06/08 15:42 UTC
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General

As a non-english dude, I have trouble differentiating this.

When I try to translate this into my language, I get something weird like "go up" for ascending. So lets say I want to sort the names of all my pets alphabetically. I want that A comes first, then B, then C... and so on. So since the alphabet is not a number for me, my brain refuses to grok what's "going up". A = 0? B = 1? C = 2? If yes, then ascending would be what I'm most of the time looking for. Table would start showing A, then B, then C... Or is that the other way around? Must I look from the bottom of the table, up?

And with numbers: If it's an ascending order, the smallest comes first? (would seem logical...)

Can someone post a short but good example for what is an ascending sort order, and what is an descending sort order? And does that apply to whatever platform, programming language, API, etc.?

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