Once upon a time, sure, you might have used an 8 bit char to store an array index and incur a 256 limit for actual reasons…
But nowadays, you do it because 256 is a “cool techy limit”. Developers are almost all dealing with at least 32 bit values, and the actual constraints driving smaller values generally have nothing to do with some power of two limitation.
They just do it to look cool in front of their developer friends.
Pretty much this…
Once upon a time, sure, you might have used an 8 bit char to store an array index and incur a 256 limit for actual reasons…
But nowadays, you do it because 256 is a “cool techy limit”. Developers are almost all dealing with at least 32 bit values, and the actual constraints driving smaller values generally have nothing to do with some power of two limitation.