Today is the 256th day of the year, which means it’s Programmer Day once again. I’d like to take this opportunity to congratulate all my colleagues around the world and wish them all quieter rooms, better tools, larger salaries, faster computers, and fewer bugs. Let the source be with you! If you write code and 256 has a special meaning to you, I tip my hat to you and hope you’ll enjoy this little comic strip from Geek And Poke.
For those of you who are not programmers, but curious about a special meaning of 256, the explanation is really simple. Bit a smallest unit of information, which can only take values of 0 or 1 in binary notation. Bits are organized into bytes. There are 8 bits in a byte. Which means there are 2 to the power of 8 combinations of ones and zeros in a byte. 2 to the power of 8 is 256. There are a few more meanings to the number, if you are still interested.
One thought on “Happy Programmer Day!”