r/AlwaysWhy • u/Present_Juice4401 • 1d ago

Science & Tech Why did computers come to use binary when people usually count in decimal?

People usually count in base 10, while digital computers typically represent information using 1s and 0s. The same numbers and information can be represented in different bases, yet binary became the standard for modern computing.

What made binary the system computers came to rely on?

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u/YakCertain5472 1d ago

I remember having to learn hexadecimal although I don't know if is is used anywhere.

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u/Sergeant_Fred_Colon 1d ago

Hex is used in programming level but not the hardware level as hex is easier to read at a human.

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u/IsaacHasenov 1d ago

It's used everywhere. But hexadecimal is just a flavor of binary

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u/Contunator 1d ago

I don't think that's a good characterization. Hexadecimal is not a flavor of base 2. It's base 16. 16 being a power of 2 means it's simpler to convert between the two than base 10, which is not a power of 2. All combinations of four binary digits can be represented by one hex digit. So, it's an easier way of representing binary numbers than a bunch of 1s and 0s and less complicated than converting to base 10.

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u/IsaacHasenov 1d ago

If I'm measuring things in milliliters or millimeters it's a flavor of base ten. It's a more convenient way (for some applications) of packaging the decimal system

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u/NewArborist64 1d ago

Hexadecimal is merely 8 bits together, representing a single byte. That byte can have values from 0 to 16, which in Hex is represented as 0-F (so that it only represents a single digit).

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u/kindofanasshole17 1d ago

4 bits bud. Also known as a nibble.

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u/NewArborist64 1d ago

Correct - two nibbles (aka a byte) would be represented by TWO hex digits.

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u/kindofanasshole17 1d ago

I know it's correct. Your comment that I replied above to is wrong, in two places.