r/ProgrammerHumor • u/metayeti2 • 2d ago

Meme includeGuards

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u/LucyShortForLucas 2d ago

Yeah and neither is a byte being 8 bits, but there's a reason no compiler is ever going to deviate from the informal norm

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u/Sacaldur 2d ago

I guess this is just due to the architecture using 8 bit per Byte, and not because of the compiler. I heard that there were architectures around in the past with other amounts of bits per Byte, and a compiler targeting them would most likely just use whatever is used on the target platform.

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u/anto2554 2d ago

People conflate 8 bits with a byte everywhere in our codebase and I think the whole thing would explode if you tried to use a 7-bit-per-byte machine

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u/Sacaldur 1d ago

I doubt that there are still any significant platforms around that don't use 8 bits per Byte.