Bitwise operations have a reputation as interview trivia that nobody uses in production. Here's three I actually use regularly:
1. Flags with bitwise OR — Permission systems are cleaner with bitmasks. READ = 1, WRITE = 2, EXECUTE = 4. To grant read+write: userPerms = READ | WRITE = 3. To check: userPerms & WRITE returns truthy if the flag is set. This replaces 8 boolean columns with 1 integer.
2. Color manipulation — Hex colors are packed RGB. 0xFF5733 → R = (color >> 16) & 0xFF, G = (color >> 8) & 0xFF, B = color & 0xFF. Darken by 30%: shift each channel right by 30% with bitwise. No string parsing needed, runs 10x faster than hex-to-rgb-to-hsl-to-hex.
3. Even/odd check — n & 1 is faster than n % 2 because modulo involves division which is 10-20x slower on modern CPUs. For alternating row colors in a 10,000-row table, the difference is measurable.
bitwisecalc.com is a free bitwise calculator: AND, OR, XOR, NOT, left shift, right shift. Displays in binary, decimal, and hex simultaneously. Runs entirely in the browser — no server, no ads.
Check it out: bitwisecalc.com — instant bitwise math with no signup.
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