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Ask HN: can you do hexadecimal arithmetic without a calculator?
If yes, what types of operations are you capable of, and for numbers of what size?
In your head or on paper?
- marssaxman 15y agoI would guess that I am equally capable with hexadecimal or decimal arithmetic, in my head. That is, I can work through the four arithmetic operations on numbers up to perhaps five or six digits. On paper, though - why would I ever do arithmetic on paper? That's computer work.
- hoodoof 15y agoCan you give an example of a complex calculation you are capable of? How quickly do you perform the calculation? For what reason did you learn to do hex calculations?
- marssaxman 15y agoComplex, no way! All I can do is simple arithmetic. Addition and subtraction are straightforward, multiplication is ok, division is hard but I can do it for small numbers. Shifting left or right is of course easy, just as multiplication or division by powers of 10 would be with decimal numbers. I don't remember specifically deciding to learn to do arithmetic in hex. I started coding about 25 years ago and hex was just part of the way things worked back in those low-level days. I suppose the arithmetic operations developed as a consequence of learning to convert back and forth between hex and decimal and learning to do bitwise operations.