16-bit Memes

Posts tagged with 16-bit

Looking At You Overlapping Segments
Hardware C++ Programming
17 days ago 182.2K views 0 shares
Looking At You Overlapping Segments
So you discover that in 16-bit real mode, the BIOS handles hardware directly and your OS doesn't need device drivers. Sweet! Freedom from driver hell, right? Then you learn about 16-bit memory segmentation and suddenly that smile disappears faster than your will to live. For the uninitiated: in real mode, memory addresses are calculated using segment:offset pairs, and because both are 16-bit values, segments can overlap in the most cursed ways possible. You can have multiple segment:offset combinations pointing to the same physical address. It's like having 5 different street addresses for the same house, except the mailman is your CPU and it's having an existential crisis. Suddenly writing device drivers doesn't seem so bad anymore. At least those make logical sense. Overlapping segments? That's just sadism with extra steps.

Integer Overflow Saves Lives
Programming C++ Algorithms Math Debugging
4 months ago 270.4K views 0 shares
Integer Overflow Saves Lives
When your sneaky request for "one more day" causes the judge's sentencing algorithm to wrap around into negative territory! The -32.768 years is exactly what happens when a 16-bit signed integer overflows from its maximum value (32,767) to its minimum (-32,768). Instead of extending your sentence, you've basically hacked the judicial system with an unhandled edge case. Free to go and grab another McD's drink while the court IT department frantically debugs their legacy C code!

Can't Remember The Last Time I Used Int 16
Programming Webdev Javascript
4 months ago 229.9K views 0 shares
Can't Remember The Last Time I Used Int 16
A robot existential crisis in four panels. The poor mechanical fellow questions its purpose (16-bit integers), only to discover it's been completely obsoleted by UTF-16 encoding. Like finding out your job has been automated... by a more efficient version of yourself. That moment when you realize you're the legacy code nobody wants to maintain anymore. At least COBOL programmers still get calls sometimes.