BaseCS: The Magic Number of Computers

Today's episode of BaseCS explores a very special number in computing: 256!

In this episode, we explore encoding schemes, which afford us a more human-friendly way of representing data as compared to binary. We learn about the ASCII encoding scheme, and how many bits the basic ASCII table requires to represent a character. Then, we'll learn how the ASCII table was extended to make use of an entire byte's worth of data! Finally, we'll see how one single bit can be super powerful, and why the number 256 is tied so closely to one byte of data.

This whole series is sponsored by Heroku. A special thank you to Heroku for their ongoing support!

Heroku Follow

Heroku is a container-based cloud Platform as a Service (PaaS). Developers use Heroku to deploy, manage, and scale modern apps. Our platform is elegant, flexible, and easy to use, offering developers the simplest path to getting their apps to market.

Comments

[Lorraine Lee]

From Catch 22:

"Of the fighting 256th Squadron," Yossarian replied, "I didn't know there were any other Captain Yossarians. As far as I know, I'm the only Captain Yossarian I know, but that's only as far as I know."

"I see," the chaplain said unhappily.

"That's two to the fighting eighth power," Yossarian pointed out, "if you're thinking of writing a symbolic poem about our squadron."

[Lautaro Lobo]

Damn this is so cool I can't believe it!

[Ben Halpern]

Believe it!