Path: csiph.com!x330-a1.tempe.blueboxinc.net!usenet.pasdenom.info!news.albasani.net!news.swapon.de!fu-berlin.de!uni-berlin.de!individual.net!not-for-mail From: "Pascal J. Bourguignon" Newsgroups: comp.programming Subject: Re: Is binary a "language"? Date: Tue, 12 Apr 2011 16:33:20 +0200 Organization: Informatimago Lines: 31 Message-ID: <87wrizczf3.fsf@kuiper.lan.informatimago.com> References: <48ecad59-950d-40ff-9fa6-6f107008335a@fu15g2000vbb.googlegroups.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Trace: individual.net 1p2XWJpsDbmKv92cbIBkTwXI+LASvdfoHPB3D9NQ88RNjs5Tat Cancel-Lock: sha1:NDQwMGQ5YmY5NjkwZmQ3ZTRiY2U2MzljZGM4NzIzNmY1ZDY4OWYzNg== sha1:7ZumnjPdNEP5X7J4bK/ttirjZRQ= Face: iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAADAAAAAwAQMAAABtzGvEAAAABlBMVEUAAAD///+l2Z/dAAAA oElEQVR4nK3OsRHCMAwF0O8YQufUNIQRGIAja9CxSA55AxZgFO4coMgYrEDDQZWPIlNAjwq9 033pbOBPtbXuB6PKNBn5gZkhGa86Z4x2wE67O+06WxGD/HCOGR0deY3f9Ijwwt7rNGNf6Oac l/GuZTF1wFGKiYYHKSFAkjIo1b6sCYS1sVmFhhhahKQssRjRT90ITWUk6vvK3RsPGs+M1RuR mV+hO/VvFAAAAABJRU5ErkJggg== X-Accept-Language: fr, es, en User-Agent: Gnus/5.13 (Gnus v5.13) Emacs/23.2 (gnu/linux) Xref: x330-a1.tempe.blueboxinc.net comp.programming:214 spinoza1111 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 {}.