There are 10 types of people in the world

[Peter Morris]

Those who understand binary, and those who don't.

Just using an old joke to open up on observation I have made over the years.
Is it just me, or have many of you also noticed how many programmers these
days do not understand the very basic nature of the binary numbering system?
I rarely work with a programmer who knows how bits work, and I find that
quite shocking

 

[Family Tree Mike]

I agree with you. Maybe because back in the day, we were forced to look at
core dumps from a mainframe, and to understand how to write our own
bitconverter routines, as there was no VMS.Net. The list goes on...

So, what are the other eight types of people...

 

[Marc Gravell]

Oh, absolutely. Even scarier, many of those not knowing binary are
from comp-sci roots! That isn't to diminish comp-sci : merely that
you'd think that it would be fairly fundamental knowledge. We can only
assume that there are now enough layers of abstraction that your
average ASP.NET/xml/etc coder simply doesn't need to know about it.
Again, no slight intended here: I have zero (or negative) design
skills, so I value somebody who can code against a model and make a
good user experience, even if they don't know their xor from their
shift.

Myself, I tend to mainly work a few layers down from there - comms,
data access, tooling, etc... so bit-masks etc are not uncommon. Coding
things like "protobuf-net" (an efficient binary serializer) would have
been, erm, "challenging" without binary knowledge.

Marc

 

[Alberto Poblacion]

Is it just me, or have many of you also noticed how many programmers these
days do not understand the very basic nature of the binary numbering
system? I rarely work with a programmer who knows how bits work, and I
find that quite shocking

Not just programmers. There are IT Pros who have trouble understanding IP
addresses, network masks and subnetting.
And on our C# front, you won't believe how many people need help
understanding what the >> and << operators do.

 

[Tom Porterfield]

Those who understand binary, and those who don't.

Just using an old joke to open up on observation I have made over the
years. Is it just me, or have many of you also noticed how many
programmers these days do not understand the very basic nature of the
binary numbering system? I rarely work with a programmer who knows how
bits work, and I find that quite shocking

I agree with the decrease, but I don't find it shocking. I rarely find
a need to use binary with the languages we have today. Understanding
how bits work can be beneficial, but again it's quite easy to write a
good program that never uses them.

As a result, I don't use them much anymore either. After all, if nobody
else understands them, they won't know what they are doing in my code,
and I like to write code, not maintain it. So I make sure I write very
maintainable code.

 

[Jeroen Mostert]

Those who understand binary, and those who don't.

Just using an old joke to open up on observation I have made over the
years. Is it just me, or have many of you also noticed how many
programmers these days do not understand the very basic nature of the
binary numbering system? I rarely work with a programmer who knows how
bits work, and I find that quite shocking

I rarely work with programmers who know assembly, and I find that not
shocking at all, since the relevance of assembly to their daily jobs is next
to nothing. For most C# programmers, the same increasingly applies to bit
twiddling.

That's not saying that this is a good thing. It's a perfectly understandable
thing, though. There are far more non-professional programmers out there
than professional ones, and the non-professional ones forego foundational
knowledge in favor of what's strictly necessary to do the job at hand.

The binary system is just one of the latest victims to start the slide into
the "foundational knowledge that's not very practical" bin. You can pick it
up if you run into a pre-existing system that prominently uses it, and be
blissfully ignorant of it until then. As you can produce perfectly
serviceable programs that way, it's hard to find fault with it.

 

[Peter Morris]

I rarely use them either, but it does happen! A year or two ago I had to
print a signature to a Zebra printer from a Pocket PC. To do this I had to
convert a 1 bit per pixel bitmap into hex strings. Guess what? I needed to
understand how bits worked in order to do it

 

[raylopez99]

You could say that there are two types of people in this world: those
who understand binary (base-2) numbering systems and those that !
don't!

RL

 

[Arne Vajhøj]

Oh, absolutely. Even scarier, many of those not knowing binary are
from comp-sci roots! That isn't to diminish comp-sci : merely that
you'd think that it would be fairly fundamental knowledge. We can only
assume that there are now enough layers of abstraction that your
average ASP.NET/xml/etc coder simply doesn't need to know about it.
Again, no slight intended here: I have zero (or negative) design
skills, so I value somebody who can code against a model and make a
good user experience, even if they don't know their xor from their
shift.

Typical business apps which is what most developers work with
can usually be done without ever thinking in bits.

Non the less I think knowledge about binary is part of the
basic understanding that programmers should have.

Experience shows that understanding why creates better
results than just knowing what.

Arne

 

[Peter Morris]

That is what I said.

 

[Marc Gravell]

Shift a variable? But isn't SHOUTING against the case-conventions?

 

[Mythran]

Maybe he needs a little bit of a hint?

The full saying is something like:
-----
"There are 10 types of people in the world, those who understand binary and
those that do not." -- and the same thing with a "subtle" hint:

"There are [HINT ==> 0000 0010 <== HINT] types of people in the world, those
who understand binary and those that do not."

lol, HTH,
Mythran

 

[Peter Morris]

"There are [HINT ==> 0000 0010 <== HINT] types of people in the world,

those who understand binary and those that do not."

hehehe

 

[David Zimmerman]

"There are [HINT ==> 0000 0010 <== HINT] types of people in the world,
those who understand binary and those that do not."

hehehe

There are 3 kinds of mathematicians, those that can do simple
arithmetic and those that can't

 

[raylopez99]

"There are [HINT ==> 0000 0010 <== HINT] types of people in theworld,
those who understand binary and those that do not."

hehehe

What's so !not funny!? He did say "ten types" and the "HINT" says
"10", clearly: 0000 0010. That's 10 with a bunch of leading zeroes.
StringFormat needs to be used to clean up the leading zeroes.

RL (a leading zero)

 

[Peter Morris]

I didn't say "ten", I said "10" - which in binary is 2.

That's the joke, only people who understand binary understand the statement.

 

[raylopez99]

I didn't say "ten", I said "10" - which in binary is 2.

That's the joke, only people who understand binary understand the statement.

Hahahahaha! Pete--seems the joke is on you!

RL

 

[Peter Morris]

How foolish I must look

--
Pete
====
http://mrpmorris.blogspot.com
http://www.capableobjects.com

There are 2 types of people in the world, those who appreciate sarcasm, and
those who appreciate sarcasm.

 

[Mythran]

Hahahahaha! Pete--seems the joke is on you!

RL

I see the joke....it's Pete...but then again, RL is a true RL leading
zero...are ya not?

I love this NG!

Mythran

 

[raylopez99]

I see the joke....it's Pete...but then again, RL is a true RL leading
zero...are ya not?

I love this NG!

Mythran

That's right, as a tech troll, I've found over the years that you can
extend a thread by leading people on with personal insults, tailor
made to the loser you are replying to. Hence my nickname, "leading
zero".

BTW, did you know your handle is named after a Roman cult
(Mithrianism) where the devotees were dipped in bull's blood? Very
appropriate in today's financial crisis.

RL