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Comment by nicetryguy | Hacker News Reader

Right. It lets you see the bits more easily: 0-F is a good representation of 4 bits.

Say i were to name a random hex value like #$9C right now it would take me a few seconds to convert that to decimal in my head though... 156 took me a few seconds to sort out. I don't have to think about what 156 means in decimal because i just know what it is.

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I'm not quite there, but close to being bilingual (binumeral?) between decimal and hex, and I think it's all about developing better intuition for each digit and their relationships.

For instance, you say 0x9C... that's just over half (0x80) of 0x100, close to 2/3rds (0xAA). Given in embedded we're often using a byte to represent a quantity, that gives enough feel.

I should practice multiplying hex by hand, I reckon that would assist in getting there.

The radix I've used since birth is easier than the one I haven't. Wild stuff.

Yes i do simplify my posts and try to write them in ways that normal people can understand. Your snide comment is a sign of success =)

Do you though? Why is 156 anymore familiar than 9C? I can't imagine 156 things any more than I can 9C things.

Yes. It was $62 degrees Fahrenheit yesterday. I can't just go displaying that in a program. Nor is it meaningful to me without a decimal conversion.

Replying to sibling since we've maxxed out comment depth...

> It was $62 degrees Fahrenheit yesterday. I can't just go displaying that in a program. Nor is it meaningful to me without a decimal conversion.

It's just as meaningless to me even if you do the conversion to base10 for display... I don't do deg F intuitively and would have to convert to Celsius in my head. It's all about what we are familiar with.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27706014

> Replying to sibling since we've maxxed out comment depth...

No, you hadn't. I’m pretty sure there is no such thing.

You're right. There was no reply link under your comment... I have no idea what happened or if I'm just an idiot.

I think that under certain circumstances the reply link doesn't show past a certain depth, but you can still (unless the comment is dead) click on the time link to get the page for the comment and reply there.

Right but the world runs on base 10 is all i'm trying to say. It's needlessly difficult to use anything else (aside from hex or binary in very specific situations). In some college sophomore philosophy class you could argue for base 27 but it doesn't make your system usable or intelligible.

> It's needlessly difficult to use anything else (aside from hex or binary in very specific situations)

Totally agree. I'm a programmer, so I do need to know those, and as an embedded developer, even more. The average person not so much. I thought that's what this particular thread was all about.

Do you know 212 = 100 = boiling, 32 = 0 = freezing, -40 = -40, and 98.6 = 37 = body temperature?

I have no trouble remembering those, and that the ratio of degree sizes is 5/9ths, so I can figure a formula out whenever I need to.

Sure, I can work it out, and I do use F when talking to friends from the USA. My only point was that I deal with hex numbers all day, so they're more intuitive to me than Fahrenheit is.

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