As a software engineer: actually there is no need for a number of people as a power of 2 unless you need exactly 1 byte to store such information which sounds ridiculous for the size of Whatsapp
this post was submitted on 07 Jul 2025
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Or some binary search tree with an artificial height lol.
It’d make sense at protocol level. Otherwise, yeah, even bit-size database columns end up being stored as a word unless the engine compacts it.
evenly specific
A lot of things arbitrarily limit what they can do to more "human friendly" numbers.
This isn't a "tech article", it's an article about tech. This is a normie article from a normie news outlet for normie readers.
Also from the article:
A previous version of this article said it was "not clear why WhatsApp settled on the oddly specific number." A number of readers have since noted that 256 is one of the most important numbers in computing, since it refers to the number of variations that can be represented by eight switches that have two positions - eight bits, or a byte. This has now been changed. Thanks for the tweets. DB
That weird ass explanation with switches and "one of the most important numbers" still sounds absolutely clueless.
Still, it works well for "normies"...
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One of the most important numbers? I'd argue the most important number in computing is either 1 or 0...
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Numbers guy here, I can confirm 256 is an evenly specific number, and not an oddly specific number.
Shout out to Castlevania II, where you can hold anywhere from 0 to 256 laurels. Yes, you read that right -- 256, not 255. I inspected RAM to double check. It's a 16-bit word on an 8-bit system with a maximum value of 0x100. They could have used 8 bits instead of 16. But no, they really did choose this arbitrary number.
I hate this. I love this.
If I ever make a game I might put stuff like this in it.
Having made a few games back in the day, this isn't something you add on purpose, this is something that you screwed up, are going to "fix later", then realize it's too much hassle to rewrite 45% of your code and you just raise the minimum spec requirements a bit to compensate.
how can you hold 0 laurels? that's different from not having laurels?
the number of laurels in your inventory is stored as an integer from 0 to 256.
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You know you're a tech nerd when 256 sounds more even than 250 or 300. 😅
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A previous version of this article said it was "not clear why WhatsApp settled on the oddly specific number." A number of readers have since noted that 256 is one of the most important numbers in computing, since it refers to the number of variations that can be represented by eight switches that have two positions - eight bits, or a byte.
Lol, weird way to say that 256 is a power of two, and computers operate in base two.
It's a pretty succinct explanation that links what it is to something most people have heard of (a byte).
Their definition is a lot better.
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In this case the limit was entirely arbitrary.
The programmers were told to pick a limit and they liked 256. There are issues with having a large number of people in a group, but it wasn't a hardware limit for this particular case.
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