Hacker News Reader

Well I also don't particularly care about how many feet are in a kilometer, since they are different units.

A mile is...a mile. A half a mile, a quarter of a mile, an eighth of a mile, etc. Yeah, there are 5280 feet in a mile. There are also 25.8 or something like that mm in a inch, some other arbitrary unit of conversion that we all have to memorize.

View on HN

Your second example is disingenuous. Mm to inch is going to be a weird conversion because they are between different unit systems. Feet to miles is unacceptable considering they're both imperial units.

These differences get important if you do any type calculation in engineering or physics.

Then it suddenly starts to matter if the result is Nm, Nmn or a Newton times a inch

Example: a Volt – which also the US uses with its metric prefixes – is defined as a Joule or a Wattsecond or a Newtonmeter.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com