Could a kind soul ELI5 this? Well, maybe ELI8. I did quite a bit of programming in the 90-00s as part of my job, although nowadays I'm more of a script kiddie.

[–] feddup@feddit.uk 4 points 1 month ago

A boolean value only needs 1 bit (on or off) for true or false. However the smallest bit of addressable memory is a byte (8 bits) hence 7 are technically wasted.

For low memory devices you could instead store 8 different Boolean values in one single byte by using bit masking instead

load more comments (2 replies)

[–] humanspiral@lemmy.ca 2 points 2 months ago

Now store the numbers (array):

0 0 0 1 0 1 1 2

think 8 bytes???

[–] finitebanjo@lemmy.world 2 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Does anybody ever figure in parity when comparing bit sizes and all that jazz or are we only ever concerned with storage space?

load more comments (1 replies)

load more comments