5 ms·
> you are just as used to hex. I do 6502 ASM with bit tricks and all and i can tell you straight up that hex is never as intuitive as decimal IMO. Base eleven
by nicetryguy 5y ago
> you are just as used to hex.
I do 6502 ASM with bit tricks and all and i can tell you straight up that hex is never as intuitive as decimal IMO.
Base eleven sounds like the stuff of nightmares =)
- tenebrisalietum 5y agoWhere the hex is "intuitive" is showing what's "even" to the CPU. For example we think of 10, 100, 50 as nice round convenient quantities. CPUs see 16, 256, 2048 as convenient quantities--in hex that's visible: 0x10, 0x100, 0x800.
- nicetryguy 5y agoRight. It lets you see the bits more easily: 0-F is a good representation of 4 bits. Say i were to name a random hex value like #$9C right now it would take me a few seconds to convert that to decimal in my head though... 156 took me a few seconds to sort out. I don't have to think about what 156 means in decimal because i just know what it is.
- vangelis 5y agoThe radix I've used since birth is easier than the one I haven't. Wild stuff.
- nicetryguy 5y agoYes i do simplify my posts and try to write them in ways that normal people can understand. Your snide comment is a sign of success =)
- sipos 5y agoDo you though? Why is 156 anymore familiar than 9C? I can't imagine 156 things any more than I can 9C things.
- nicetryguy 5y agoYes. It was $62 degrees Fahrenheit yesterday. I can't just go displaying that in a program. Nor is it meaningful to me without a decimal conversion.
- photojosh 5y agoReplying to sibling since we've maxxed out comment depth... > It was $62 degrees Fahrenheit yesterday. I can't just go displaying that in a program. Nor is it meaningful to me without a decimal conversion. It's just as meaningless to me even if you do the conversion to base10 for display... I don't do deg F intuitively and would have to convert to Celsius in my head. It's all about what we are familiar with. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27706014 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27706014
- dragonwriter 5y ago> Replying to sibling since we've maxxed out comment depth... No, you hadn't. I’m pretty sure there is no such thing.
- photojosh 5y agoYou're right. There was no reply link under your comment... I have no idea what happened or if I'm just an idiot.
- dragonwriter 5y agoI think that under certain circumstances the reply link doesn't show past a certain depth, but you can still (unless the comment is dead) click on the time link to get the page for the comment and reply there.
- nicetryguy 5y agoRight but the world runs on base 10 is all i'm trying to say. It's needlessly difficult to use anything else (aside from hex or binary in very specific situations). In some college sophomore philosophy class you could argue for base 27 but it doesn't make your system usable or intelligible.
- photojosh 5y agoI'm not quite there, but close to being bilingual (binumeral?) between decimal and hex, and I think it's all about developing better intuition for each digit and their relationships. For instance, you say 0x9C... that's just over half (0x80) of 0x100, close to 2/3rds (0xAA). Given in embedded we're often using a byte to represent a quantity, that gives enough feel. I should practice multiplying hex by hand, I reckon that would assist in getting there.
- Orou 5y agoIsn't it more intuitive for OP codes though?
- perl4ever 5y agoIt's interesting that octal used to be popular and isn't any more. I'm not familiar with how that culture shift happened, but I remember learning C in the 80s and thinking it was odd that it supported octal when I'd never seen it anywhere else.
- hoseja 5y agoIf you learned hex in primary school and there was a primary numeral system for them, you'd find them just as intuitive. Same for base-six etc.