Programming, computers, etc. [Serious]

[Dreams]

Who still knows how to code in binary?

[Anonymously Famous]

Binary code changes depending on the processor, but I did learn how to code in binary for a make-believe processor (created for educational purposes). It's possible to look at a program in a hex editor and figure some things out, especially if you know the instruction set for a particular processor. I should really look up the Intel processor instruction set sometime.

[Anonymously Famous]

Hi all,

I was asking around the Face Books yesterday about how I could apply my new found Haskell knowledge (not that I know everything about it yet). One friend reminded me of Project Euler. You have to register to keep track of your progress and check your answers, but essentially it's a list of problems that can be solved with math and programming. You can see the list of problems here to see if it's something you might want to try.

Just thought I'd pass that on.

-AF

[AmazinglyASDF]

Binary confuses me. Can you explain it for an idiot?

[MTG09]

binary is made of only 1's and 0's
Instead of decimal where the place rolls over after 9, binary rolls over after 1
the tens place in decimal is the twos place in binary, the hundreds are the 4 place, the thousands are the 8's place
0=0, 1=1, 10=2, 11=3, 100=4
so the first #'s are 0,1,10,11,100...

[AmazinglyASDF]

What

[MTG09]

better?

[AmazinglyASDF]

Er, no. I don't understand the following:

Instead of decimal where the place rolls over after 9, binary rolls over after 1

the tens place in decimal is the twos place in binary, the hundreds are the 4 place, the thousands are the 8's place

0=0, 1=1, 10=2, 11=3, 100=4

[atomtengeralattjaro]

I'm pretty sure they teach this at every school. And by that I mean every educational institution above kindergarten.

The base of a number system determines how many states can one digit (one number character) take on. Meaning, in base 10 (the default number system for us) one digit can take up to 10 states, because the number you can show on one digit can be any number from 0 to 9.
Unlike in base 2 (binary), where one digit can only take up two states: it can either be 0 or 1. Therefore using one digit, you can only show 0 or 1. If you want to show 2, you will need another digit, so your number will be 10 (that's "one zero", and NOT ten). The values of each digit multiply by 2:

Code: Select all

...|32|16|8|4|2|1 <- digit values
              1 0 <- the binary number

see, the 1 is under the value 2, therefore it is worth 2 in base 10. Under the value 1 there is only a zero, so it is worth nothing.
Similarly, if you try to convert 6 to binary, you'll get 110, because:

Code: Select all

...|32|16|8|4|2|1 <- digit values
            1 1 0 <- the binary number

there is a 1 under the value 4, so it's worth 4, and then there is a 1 under the value 2, so it's worth 2, and there is a 0 under the value 1 so it's worth 0, the sum of these (4+2) is worth 6.
I hope you can see why 11 in binary means 3 in base 10, and 1010 in binary means 10 in base10, and so on..

[Anonymously Famous]

I was wearing this shirt yesterday. It's relevant, really.

If you don't want to study binary too in-depth, you can just think of it as another way to represent a number. It follows the same logic as the numbers that you're used to, except using 2 instead of 10 as a base. Any number can be represented in binary or in decimal.

Binary is important in programming, and in computers in general. That's because every digit in binary only has two states: '0' and '1'. Computers, essentially, are a collection of switches that can have only two states: "off" and "on". For this reason, everything in your computer is stored in binary. Computer programs translate to instructions that are represented as binary numbers. Bitmap images are a list of binary numbers representing what color each pixel should be. Characters (numbers, letters, etc.) each have a numerical value. Without the concept of binary, computers as we know them would not exist.

[AmazinglyASDF]

I lol'd.

[atomtengeralattjaro]

i was hoping you didn't abuse our willingness to help.

[AmazinglyASDF]

How would I?

[Anonymously Famous]

I'm guessing you were laughing at my shirt, and not at our explanations, correct?

(BTW, atom, I didn't learn anything about different bases until high school, and only then because I took programming classes).

[atomtengeralattjaro]

that's strange.

[Dreams]

Base .5 How would that work?

[Anonymously Famous]

Base 0.5? It would probably be backwards somehow. The way it normally works is ...n3 n2 n1 n0.n-1 n-2 n-3..., where n is the base. Since your base would be a fraction, the "place" would actually get smaller going to the left and larger going to the right.

This message board entry that I came to through a Google search confirms what I suspected. Since 0.5 is the inverse of 2, base 0.5 would look like a backwards binary.

"Base 0.5" wouldn't be much different from base 2; you just swap the stuff to the left of the units position with the stuff to the right. For example, thirteen in base 0.5 would be 1.011, instead of 1101 in binary, and four and one-eighth would be 1000.01 in base 0.5 instead of 100.001 in binary.

[atomtengeralattjaro]

fun fun! (what about base 0? )

[Anonymously Famous]

Can't do base 0. Can't do base 1. Negative bases can be done, though. If you do base -2, for example, the "places" would be ...-8 4 -2 1, so you could represent any number, positive or negative, without using a negative sign.

[Wizard of Asdf]

Base 1 =
0 = 0
00 = 1
000 = 2
So base 1 is possible