@argv_minus_one@mastodon.sdf.org
Post #4209175
2026-06-11 17:34 UTC
@marinheiro@ciberlandia.pt
People were doing division in their heads? Wow. That's hard.
It's hard for computers too, by the way. Division takes much longer than most other instructions, and when a program says to do division, optimizing compilers will substitute a different operation when possible. A division by 2, for example, can be done faster by just shifting the bits, much like division by 10 in decimal is faster.
@tykling@mastodon.social
Replies (1)
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@marinheiro@ciberlandia.pt 2026-06-11 18:38
@argv_minus_one@mastodon.sdf.org @tykling@mastodon.social I'm not talking about two long multidigit numbers like Ramanujan or anything. Smaller divisions are just reversing times table, slightly longer divisions visualise writing the steps on a piece of paper. Converting to binary first would be a step too far (although thats just division too..) 😂