Maybe it's just me and the job I do (not really low level stuff), I use [] array access much more frequently than bitwise shift operations, so for me it's quite

Maybe it's just me and the job I do (not really low level stuff), I use [] array access much more frequently than bitwise shift operations, so for me it's quite the opposite. Having worked with dozens of other developers doing similar things I guess it's the same for them. I know there are those who do bitwise shift everyday (my firmware devs coworker do a lot), but at least in my experience we are talking about 1 to 10 ratio.