Discussing the article: "From Basic to Intermediate: Arrays and Strings (III)"
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Check out the new article: From Basic to Intermediate: Arrays and Strings (III).
This article considers two aspects. First, how the standard library can convert binary values to other representations such as octal, decimal, and hexadecimal. Second, we will talk about how we can determine the width of our password based on the secret phrase, using the knowledge we have already acquired.
One of the most common tasks in programming is translating and handling information or databases. Programming is fundamentally about this. If you're thinking about learning how to program but don't understand that the purpose of an application is to create data that a computer can interpret, and then translate that data into information humans can understand, you're heading in the wrong direction. It would be better to stop and start again from scratch. Because, in truth, programming is entirely based on this simple principle. We have information that must be made comprehensible to the computer. Once the computer produces a result, we need to translate that result into something we can understand.
Computers are excellent at working with ones and zeros. But they're completely useless when it comes to processing any other type of information. The same applies to humans: we're terrible at interpreting strings of ones and zeros, but we can easily understand the meaning of a word or a graph.
Now, let's speak a bit more simply about some concepts. At the dawn of computing, the first processors had an OpCode set - a set of instructions for working with decimal values. Yes, dear reader, the earliest processors could understand what an 8 or a 5 was. These instructions were part of the BCD set, which allowed processors to work with numbers in a way that made sense to humans, but using binary logic.
However, over time, BCD instructions fell out of use. As it proved far more complex to design a circuit capable of performing decimal calculations than to perform calculations in binary and then convert the result to decimal. As a result, the responsibility of performing this translation shifted to the programmer.
Back then, dealing with floating-point numbers was practically a mess, a real "fruit salad". But that's a topic for another time, as with the tools and concepts presented so far, it wouldn't yet be possible to explain how floating-point systems work. I need to cover a few more concepts before getting there.
Author: CODE X