16 bit architectures are weird enough that a lot of tools don't support them. And 8 bit architectures are basically only used for things like Arduino nowadays.

16 bit architectures are weird enough that a lot of tools don't support them. And 8 bit architectures are basically only used for things like Arduino nowadays. However, using a 32 bit number to store values that will never be larger than 16 bits isn't that bad, it's just very slow.