I have been spending some time recently watching programmers and computer scientists simply talking. These people are far greater in the field than I'll ever be. I'm so glad that they are gracious enough (Or someone is willing to pay them to be gracious enough) to freely share their knowledge. I love hearing old 'war' stories.
One video was a discussion on why binary was chosen for computer processing, instead of decimal which is so much easier for people to comprehend, since we use decimal every day. It's a trade off. And back in the day power and processing was at a definite premium. The discussion brought to mind similar talks regarding programming languages. There too is a trade off. Ease of programming versus absolute optimal run speed.
Even if such discussions are way over the viewer's head they have a ton to teach. I am always intrigued by the origins of things or the logic behind them. Why end lines with ;, why did C succeed so well where other languages were not so popular, why binary, and so on. Tales told by old salts shed light on all of these questions and more.
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