oddly specific
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If it's engagement bait, it's working.
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I'm typing this on a 64 bit device. Why anyone would limit something to an 8 bit number in 2025 is really odd.
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So, I get that 256 is a base 2 number. But we're not running 8-bit servers or whatever here (and yes, I understand that's not what 8-bit generally refers to). Is there some kind of technical limitation I'm not thinking of where 257 would be any more difficult to implement, or really is it just that 256 has a special place in someone's heart because it's a base 2 number?
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So, I get that 256 is a base 2 number. But we're not running 8-bit servers or whatever here (and yes, I understand that's not what 8-bit generally refers to). Is there some kind of technical limitation I'm not thinking of where 257 would be any more difficult to implement, or really is it just that 256 has a special place in someone's heart because it's a base 2 number?
when writing somewhat low-level code, you always make assumptions about things. in this case, they chose to manage 256 entries in some array; the bound used to be lower.
but implicitly there's a tradeoff, probably memory / CPU utilisation in the server.
it's always about the tradeoff between what the users want, what is easier for you to maintain, what your infrastructure can provide, etc.
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So, I get that 256 is a base 2 number. But we're not running 8-bit servers or whatever here (and yes, I understand that's not what 8-bit generally refers to). Is there some kind of technical limitation I'm not thinking of where 257 would be any more difficult to implement, or really is it just that 256 has a special place in someone's heart because it's a base 2 number?
Maybe each user has a user id in a group, and that group user id is stored as 8bit int? Idk
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ITT: People who have never done low level networking.
Edit: Without some absolutely crazy hacks, the smallest amount of data you can really transfer or compute on is one byte. 256 requires one byte, 257 requires you to DOUBLE the data used to 2 bytes. Multiply this by whatever data they send and the problem remains the same.
This is the kind of thing that comes up a lot designing custom protocols.
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So, I get that 256 is a base 2 number. But we're not running 8-bit servers or whatever here (and yes, I understand that's not what 8-bit generally refers to). Is there some kind of technical limitation I'm not thinking of where 257 would be any more difficult to implement, or really is it just that 256 has a special place in someone's heart because it's a base 2 number?
There's often a lot of fun cheats you can use - bitwise operators, etc - if your numbers are small powers of two.
Also it's easier to organize memory, if you're doing funky memory management tricks, if the memory you're allocating fits nicely into the blocks available to you which are always in powers of two.
They're not necessarily great reasons if you're using a language with sufficient abstraction, but it's still easier in most instances to use powers of two anyways if you're getting into the guts of things.
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Since you start counting from zero, the byte limit should be 255 = 2^8 - 1.
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This isn't a "tech article", it's an article about tech. This is a normie article from a normie news outlet for normie readers.
Also from the article:
A previous version of this article said it was "not clear why WhatsApp settled on the oddly specific number." A number of readers have since noted that 256 is one of the most important numbers in computing, since it refers to the number of variations that can be represented by eight switches that have two positions - eight bits, or a byte. This has now been changed. Thanks for the tweets. DB
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Wouldn't max value for 8 bit (unsigned) integer be 255? Like the number has 256 distinct values, but that includes 0.
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This isn't a "tech article", it's an article about tech. This is a normie article from a normie news outlet for normie readers.
Also from the article:
A previous version of this article said it was "not clear why WhatsApp settled on the oddly specific number." A number of readers have since noted that 256 is one of the most important numbers in computing, since it refers to the number of variations that can be represented by eight switches that have two positions - eight bits, or a byte. This has now been changed. Thanks for the tweets. DB
That weird ass explanation with switches and "one of the most important numbers" still sounds absolutely clueless.
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Yep very weird, should have been 255.
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Wouldn't max value for 8 bit (unsigned) integer be 255? Like the number has 256 distinct values, but that includes 0.
If this is about a counter for users in the chat, sure. But if this is an array of users indexed by an 8-bit number, then it will fit 256 slots with the first slot being numbered 0.
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Yep very weird, should have been 255.
No, you can't have a group of zero, so the counter doesn't need to waste a position counting zero.
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Numbers guy here, I can confirm 256 is an evenly specific number, and not an oddly specific number.
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Shout out to Castlevania II, where you can hold anywhere from 0 to 256 laurels. Yes, you read that right -- 256, not 255. I inspected RAM to double check. It's a 16-bit word on an 8-bit system with a maximum value of
0x100. They could have used 8 bits instead of 16. But no, they really did choose this arbitrary number. -
Numbers guy here, I can confirm 256 is an evenly specific number, and not an oddly specific number.
Oh yeah well if you're some sort of numbers guy, answer me this: I think you're name is super cool, and makes me wonder, is there a largest prime you can make listing digits of pi starting from the beginning. There's gotta be infinite right?
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Numbers guy here, I can confirm 256 is an evenly specific number, and not an oddly specific number.
Oh you are the numbers guy ? Name every number
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Shout out to Castlevania II, where you can hold anywhere from 0 to 256 laurels. Yes, you read that right -- 256, not 255. I inspected RAM to double check. It's a 16-bit word on an 8-bit system with a maximum value of
0x100. They could have used 8 bits instead of 16. But no, they really did choose this arbitrary number.Maybe they keep some other data in the same space using bitmask?
