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Re: Is binary a "language"?

From "Pascal J. Bourguignon" <pjb@informatimago.com>
Newsgroups comp.programming
Subject Re: Is binary a "language"?
Date 2011-04-12 16:33 +0200
Organization Informatimago
Message-ID <87wrizczf3.fsf@kuiper.lan.informatimago.com> (permalink)
References <48ecad59-950d-40ff-9fa6-6f107008335a@fu15g2000vbb.googlegroups.com> <imddm2$und$1@speranza.aioe.org> <slrniokhrq.21f1.willem@toad.stack.nl> <cd16012d-31fa-442e-a3b1-7b125ca6c957@a17g2000yqn.googlegroups.com>

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spinoza1111 <spinoza1111@yahoo.com> writes:

> You missed the point at which it was clear that binary is an adjective
> and not a noun, Mijn Heer. "I program using binary" needs to be
> rewritten in "normal form" as "I program using binary machine
> language". The word "binary" adds information since historically, not
> all machine languages were binary. Decimal computers were programmed
> by way of 6-bit codes in decimal machine language.

So were they decimal or binary???


Decimal computers used electronic tubes with ten states.

Russians developed ternary computers where three electronic states were
used.

If you have only two states, then it's binary.




Since decimal arithmetic has the advantage of being the one human
usually use, it was simulated on binary computers (destined to
business applications), by encoding one decimal digit into FOUR bits,
not six.  


-- 
__Pascal Bourguignon__                     http://www.informatimago.com/
A bad day in () is better than a good day in {}.

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Re: Is binary a "language"? spinoza1111 <spinoza1111@yahoo.com> - 2011-04-12 05:57 -0700
  Re: Is binary a "language"? "Pascal J. Bourguignon" <pjb@informatimago.com> - 2011-04-12 16:33 +0200
    Re: Is binary a "language"? "osmium" <r124c4u102@comcast.net> - 2011-04-12 09:46 -0500
      Re: Is binary a "language"? "Pascal J. Bourguignon" <pjb@informatimago.com> - 2011-04-12 17:00 +0200
        Re: Is binary a "language"? "osmium" <r124c4u102@comcast.net> - 2011-04-12 10:11 -0500
        Re: Is binary a "language"? spinoza1111 <spinoza1111@yahoo.com> - 2011-04-15 06:07 -0700
          Re: Is binary a "language"? "BartC" <bc@freeuk.com> - 2011-04-15 14:40 +0100
            Re: Is binary a "language"? spinoza1111 <spinoza1111@yahoo.com> - 2011-04-16 06:58 -0700
          Re: Is binary a "language"? "Pascal J. Bourguignon" <pjb@informatimago.com> - 2011-04-15 19:23 +0200
            Re: Is binary a "language"? spinoza1111 <spinoza1111@yahoo.com> - 2011-04-16 07:19 -0700
              Re: Is binary a "language"? "Pascal J. Bourguignon" <pjb@informatimago.com> - 2011-04-17 02:30 +0200
        Re: Is binary a "language"? Thad Smith <ThadSmith@acm.org> - 2011-04-24 15:37 -0700
      Re: Is binary a "language"? spinoza1111 <spinoza1111@yahoo.com> - 2011-04-15 06:01 -0700
    Re: Is binary a "language"? spinoza1111 <spinoza1111@yahoo.com> - 2011-04-15 05:40 -0700
      Re: Is binary a "language"? "Pascal J. Bourguignon" <pjb@informatimago.com> - 2011-04-15 19:12 +0200
        Re: Is binary a "language"? spinoza1111 <spinoza1111@yahoo.com> - 2011-04-16 07:15 -0700

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