If you’re not a programmer, you (hopefully!) recognise the abbreviations for December 25th (Dec 25) and October 31st (Oct 31), and (hopefully!!) recognise them as Christmas and Halloween. So far, so good, but not very funny – even to a programmer. To a programmer, the abbreviations ‘Dec 25’ and ‘Oct 31’ can also mean something entirely different. Dec 25 is an abbreviation for “Decimal 25” and “Oct 31” is an abbreviation for “Octal 31”, and for reasons that I’d like to explain, these are exactly the same thing.
Armchair Dissident (April 15, 2009)
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