Path: utzoo!censor!geac!jtsv16!uunet!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!cwjcc!ukma!rutgers!mit-eddie!uw-beaver!blake!Tomobiki-Cho!mrc
From: mrc@Tomobiki-Cho.CAC.Washington.EDU (Mark Crispin)
Newsgroups: comp.arch
Subject: Re: Flash! 16 not power of 2!
Message-ID: <3144@blake.acs.washington.edu>
Date: 7 Aug 89 23:41:25 GMT
References: <38139@stellar.UUCP>
Distribution: usa
Organization: Mendou Zaibatsu, Tomobiki-Cho, Butsumetsu-Shi
Lines: 50

In article <38139@stellar.UUCP> wright@sol.UUCP () writes:
>In article <3050@blake.acs.washington.edu>, mrc@Tomobiki-Cho.CAC.Washington.EDU
>(Mark Crispin) writes:
>>Back in days long by, people would actually *do work* in a power-of-2-based
>>number counting system.  You would not believe how much easier it is to do
>>arithmetic in octal instead of hex -- not to mention translating between
>>octal and the values displayed in the lights or that you key in the switches!
>
>This is either missing a smiley or is the dumbest thing I have ever read
>on comp.arch.  Listen carefully, bucko:  hexadecimal is base 16.  Last
>time I looked into the matter, 16 was a power of two, and I have not had
>much trouble translating it into binary, if you know what I mean and I
>doubt you do.
>
>(*flame off*)
>
>[maybe he thinks hex is decimal??]

Yay-ah, buckie boy, ah know what ol' hex is.  Ahm jest a young'un in
computing 'cuz ah've only done it fer 18 years...

You seem to think I'm talking about easy for a computer to do arithmetic.
I could care less how easy it is for a computer; that's why we have
computers.  I care about how easy it is for a human

It is easy for humans to do arithmetic in decimal because we've been
trained to do so since a young age.  It is relatively easy for us to do
arithmetic in octal since you can use your childhood-learned arithmetic
tables plus a rule to drop 8's and 9's (= offset by 2) in addition and
subtraction.

It is much more difficult to do arithmetic in hex.  You have to remember
glyphs that are not used in the human (decimal) counting system (A through
F), their bit patterns, and their arithmetic rules.  I can probably tell
you that the bit pattern 111010011110111001100010110000001101 is
723671426015 octal much faster than you can tell me it is E9EE62C0D hex.

Fortunately, along with the creeping imposition of hexadecimal on all
modern computers have come tools such that it's virtually never
necessary to do any *human work* in hex.  There was fun in keying in
through the switches and reading the lights (I will always remember the
PDP-8 RIM loader and the PDP-10 "20 loader").  But that's ancient history
now.

Mark Crispin / 6158 Lariat Loop NE / Bainbridge Island, WA 98110-2020
mrc@CAC.Washington.EDU / MRC@WSMR-SIMTEL20.Army.Mil / (206) 842-2385
Atheist & Proud / 450cc Rebel pilot -- a step up from 250cc's!!!
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