This article is part of the sequence The Basics You Won't Learn in the Basics aimed at eager people striving to gain a deeper understanding of programming and computer science.
Last time, we talked about character sets and encoding. This time, we will return to dealing with binary numbers. However, this time we won't examine how binary numbers work and what is their nature. We have covered that in previous articles. Today, we will see how to apply that knowledge in practice by examining how bitwise operations work. This topic is usually neglected in a traditional computer science curriculum (At least it is in some universities I know). But I think that this knowledge can be useful for two reasons:- Expanding your computer science knowledge by gaining a deeper understanding of binary numbers and of low-level computer science aspects.
- Gaining a valuable tool which can be useful when pursuing specialization as a low-level programmer (Embedded developer, for example).