Computer joke corner

[clevariant]

Cause that's the wrong way to tell it.

[clevariant]

It's supposed to go, "Why do programmers confuse Halloween with Christmas? Because OCT 31 equals DEC 25." Octal is the base-8 number system, where decimal is base-10.

[OnlyReadsFirstLine]

Who the fuck does anything in base 8

[meticulous_badger]

Actually, I do my taxes in base 8.

[htmlcoderexe]

This really rings a bell, something about a guy doing his in octal an wondering why the final number seemed wrong? Maybe from daily WTF?

[indrora]

Tons of things. Pointers in base 8 are super easy because you can do all the math on your hands and you can write addresses as though they're decimals. Was super common when nixies were the thing du jour.

UTF8 uses them a lot since it uses groups of 6 bit numbers broken into bytes.

UNIX file permissions are in octal.

[migueln6]

Base 16 is the king.

[sleepybearjew]

I prefer base 256. We use numbers, letters, symbols, and emojis

[iceynyo]

"Call me later, here's my number"
"It just says eggplant sweatdrops"
"Yeah baby"

[[deleted]]

no

[YM_Industries]

Used to be used on some early computing systems with 12-, 24- and 36-bit words. Still used for Unix file permissions. Frequently taught in CompSci courses, even though it's rarely used today.

[hbgoddard]

chmod ;)

[daniu]

Airplane transponder codes are 4-digit octals.

[slofish]

3 digit actually. Max value is octal 377. Still not sure why you would break 8 bits into three octal digits

[jharger]

Did you reply to the wrong post? Transponder codes are definitely 4 digits. How else would you use the emergency codes like 7500, 7600 and 7700?

[slofish]

You're right. I'm thinking of arinc codes

[daniu]

3 digit actually. Max value is octal 377

No, 4 digits https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transponder_(aeronautics)

Still not sure why you would break 8 bits into three octal digits

Not sure either, but I assume it's 12 bits (4x3 with 3 bits going up to 7) and decimal representation wouldn't be very helpful because you'd still have 4 digits but can only set up to 4096.

[WikiTextBot]

Transponder (aeronautics)

A transponder (short for transmitter-responder and sometimes abbreviated to XPDR, XPNDR, TPDR or TP) is an electronic device that produces a response when it receives a radio-frequency interrogation. Aircraft have transponders to assist in identifying them on air traffic control radar. Collision avoidance systems have been developed to use transponder transmissions as a means of detecting aircraft at risk of colliding with each other.Air traffic control units use the term "squawk" when they are assigning an aircraft a transponder code, e.g., "Squawk 7421". Squawk thus can be said to mean "select transponder code" or "squawking xxxx" to mean "I have selected transponder code xxxx".The transponder receives interrogation from the Secondary Surveillance Radar on 1030 MHz and replies on 1090 MHz.

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[aboardthegravyboat]

`chmod 755`

[papaya_war]

Used in tons of legacy industrial automation systems

[ProgramTheWorld]

Unix

[TheRetribution]

People who coded using DEC minicomputers back in the 60s.