3 ms·
"Computers are good at reading bytes in swapped order. I suck at it." Byte endianess is about binary content, which isn't supposed to be read by humans. Humans
by restalis 12y ago
"Computers are good at reading bytes in swapped order. I suck at it."
Byte endianess is about binary content, which isn't supposed to be read by humans. Humans read only interpretations of the binary data. You shouldn't come nowhere near to the question of if you are or aren't good at reading binary.
- jpindar 12y agoLet me guess, the software you write runs on desktop computers, web servers and such?
- Roboprog 12y agood -t x1, much? As somebody who had to generate and read back tokenized files decades ago, I can vouch that little endian sucks.
- wyager 12y ago>Byte endianess is about binary content, which isn't supposed to be read by humans. You can tell a lot about someone's programming history from statements like this. Anyone who habitually works on low-level code has plenty of experience working with raw binary data.
- restalis 12y agoWorking with raw binary data, like having it represented as hexadecimal pairs per byte? That is an interpretation. Having some representation for each bit in the group is still an interpretation, regardless if you consider those bits individually or in groups forming masks. "Reading" that binary content is by representing it in some form or another and interpreting it as such. Like I said, humans read interpretations of that binary data. P.S.: You are a bad judge of characters. I worked on low-level code (microcontrollers programming, for a living).
- weland 12y agoWell, reading the hexadecimal interpretation of a memory dump full of little-endian data is annoying as fuck.
- restalis 12y agoAlthough I believe your sentiment, I'm not sure on the other hand how much easier it appears to you with BE dumps. Reading data is perceived to be difficult when it shares little similarity with what we're already accustomed to. In time it will become more familiar, especially when you'll do a lot of it.
- weland 11y agoI've done enough of it that I hate it routinely, rather than occasionally.
- mreiland 11y agoInitially I disagreed with you until I thought about it for a second and realized Hex was technically an interpretation as well. You're mostly right, although I do think calling hex an interpretation is maybe not completely accurate. It's accurate enough, but I could see someone arguing the other way. But regardless, I agree that no one is really going to be looking at raw binary. Atleast I can't think of a good reason why anyone would.