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[QUOTE=Helz;923259]So I get the 10 base number system. We have 10 fingers or whatever so it makes sense

I get the 12 base number system everyone hates on. There are many factors that make it kinda better but it totally is stupid when measuring in a base twelve and calculating in a base 10

What I have never questioned until now and am curious about is why the base 8 hybrid 10 for programming? I am 'good enough' to do figure out and do what I consider basic programming stuff but I am curious if anyone has a deeper understanding to whats going on here. It just looks as irrational as the 60 second, 60 minute 12 hour twice system we see in clocks..

(Also.. Anyone have any clue wtf the French were thinking with the clock thing?)[/QUOTE]

I'm not sure what you mean by "base 8 hybrid 10".

The reason computers use base 8 (or base 16) often is because of historical reasons. In the early days of computing, ASCII was invented as a standard of storing any English character as a set of 7 bits (7 being the minimum that could satisfactorily store every character) plus one byte for error checking, thus 8. Since that standard became so widespread, 8 bits to a byte became the norm.

Originally Posted by Helz

So I get the 10 base number system. We have 10 fingers or whatever so it makes sense

I get the 12 base number system everyone hates on. There are many factors that make it kinda better but it totally is stupid when measuring in a base twelve and calculating in a base 10

What I have never questioned until now and am curious about is why the base 8 hybrid 10 for programming? I am 'good enough' to do figure out and do what I consider basic programming stuff but I am curious if anyone has a deeper understanding to whats going on here. It just looks as irrational as the 60 second, 60 minute 12 hour twice system we see in clocks..

(Also.. Anyone have any clue wtf the French were thinking with the clock thing?)

I'm not sure what you mean by "base 8 hybrid 10".

The reason computers use base 8 (or base 16) often is because of historical reasons. In the early days of computing, ASCII was invented as a standard of storing any English character as a set of 7 bits (7 being the minimum that could satisfactorily store every character) plus one byte for error checking, thus 8. Since that standard became so widespread, 8 bits to a byte became the norm.