A previous version of this article said it was “not clear why WhatsApp settled on the oddly specific number.” A number of readers have since noted that 256 is one of the most important numbers in computing, since it refers to the number of variations that can be represented by eight switches that have two positions - eight bits, or a byte.
Lol, weird way to say that 256 is a power of two, and computers operate in base two.
It used to be a way bigger deal when computers were very memory scarce, if you needed to say, represent 1024 values, that means you’d use 10 bits or 2 bytes, the remaining 6 bits could be used to store other related information like flags but more often than not it would be waste (unused values that still have to be represented as 0s)
These numbers are pretty arbitrary nowadays but they still show up a lot in computing. They didn’t choose 256 so they could represent it in a byte, the real reason is probably that groups larger than 256 can’t realistically be managed by users.
Lol, weird way to say that 256 is a power of two, and computers operate in base two.
Their definition is a lot better.
It’s a pretty succinct explanation that links what it is to something most people have heard of (a byte).
It used to be a way bigger deal when computers were very memory scarce, if you needed to say, represent 1024 values, that means you’d use 10 bits or 2 bytes, the remaining 6 bits could be used to store other related information like flags but more often than not it would be waste (unused values that still have to be represented as 0s)
These numbers are pretty arbitrary nowadays but they still show up a lot in computing. They didn’t choose 256 so they could represent it in a byte, the real reason is probably that groups larger than 256 can’t realistically be managed by users.
That’s my 2¢ anyways.
Tbf saying it that way brings a visual metaphor. Simply giving it as a mathematical definition would leave it feeling just as arbitrary.