Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Poll: How many programmers don't know about bit-wise operations?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

1–10 of 82 posts

Poll: How many programmers don't know about bit-wise operations?

#1

Post by ColinWright »

Recently this item was submitted:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5506458

It's simple, clean, clear, and explains the first steps in elementary bit-wise operations.

For me, I learned this within hours, if not minutes, of my first encounter with the concept of computing. But I'm an old fart, and definitely behind the times. Everyone below the age of 25 has had a life full of computers, and for most people, they have no concept of how these things work, even though they use computers every day.

But programmers are somewhere in between. They don't just use computers, they make computers do things.

So what's your knowledge and experience of bit-wise operations?

Re: Poll: How many programmers don't know about bit-wise operations?

#3

Post by DomBlack »

I have found in my time, some programmers have never heard of them, nor understand why you would ever use them. That said I've also found if you sit down with them for 5-10 minutes and explain they see the light and become interested enough to go and play with them.

Re: Poll: How many programmers don't know about bit-wise operations?

#4

Post by anigbrowl »

I like the elegance of bitwise operations and use them sometimes in signal processing applications to avoid a performance hit, though I'm no expert. But I avoid them in any high level code because a) the compiler is likely going to optimize that anyway and b) to be as human-readable as possible, the code should clearly describe the objective rather than exploit the underlying mechanism. In other words if I want to multiply or divide then I prefer to write that than rely on the reader's knowledge of what bit-shifting does, and also so that the code in question would run properly on some hypothetical ternary computer or suchlike. As I'm mainly a hobby/ad-hoc programmer I can afford not to care about the probable overhead this imposes.

Great question, I hope this stimulates some discussion.

Re: Poll: How many programmers don't know about bit-wise operations?

#5

Post by jcr »

ColinWright wrote: post #2

Clickable: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5506458

At the moment, the linked submission is sitting at 2 points. The default is 1 point, and I'm the +1 up-voter. People writing code should know these things, but the move away from learning real low level languages means many people never learn these things.

NOTE: The "low level" languages are assembly, microcode, and machine code, but never C. In spite of claims to the contrary, C is a high level language.

When employers have to give tests like FizzBuzz or ask candidates if they can swap two variable without a third, then the knowledge level of "most" (self proclaimed) programmers is well below understanding bit hacks.

Post reply on HN