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@b0rk@social.jvns.ca

Post #3051259

2026-06-02 15:28 UTC

just noticed "how integers and floats work" came out 3 years ago today originally this this was a zine about "how computers represent data in binary" (what's little endian? big endian? what's struct alignment? why do 32 bit integers cause so many problems? how do we represent strings?) but we ended up running out of space after we explained integers and floats so never got to struct alignment and null-terminated strings :) get it here: https://wizardzines.com/zines/integers-floats/

Replies (3)

  • @b0rk@social.jvns.ca I see Puffy 🐡 🧡 #OpenBSD

    Open ##3293643

  • @rhempel@cosocial.ca 2026-06-03 03:34

    @b0rk@social.jvns.ca I am always happy to read anything that you write - it's done with simple words and includes some notes on why it's relevant for you. The classic Byte Order Fallacy by @robpike@hachyderm.io is something I send to every programmer that doesn't believe me when I gently tell them they are making things more complicated than they need to be. Your work (and Rob's) are what the Internet was supposed to be, so thank you! https://commandcenter.blogspot.com/2012/04/byte-order-fallacy.html?m=1

    Open ##3293644

  • @PhilSalkie@mindly.social 2026-06-03 11:46

    @b0rk@social.jvns.ca This is so, so needed. Was called to a customer site - 3 hour drive away - because a controls engineer couldn't get a communications module working in an industrial controller. When I got there, he told me the communications wasn't showing any failure errors, but the numbers that came through were garbled - the only value that displayed properly was zero. I looked at what we was doing for about ten milliseconds, them told him he was reading in a float and interpreting it as an integer. "What's an integer?" was the reply. I proceeded to learn that this "controls engineer" did not understand the concept of a bit, byte, int, unsigned, long, float, or double - although he did realize there was a difference between the counting numbers and the real numbers. It. Was. A. Long. Day.

    Open ##3293645