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Vaidehi Joshi for The DEV Team

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BaseCS: Working with Binary

Today's episode of BaseCS continues our exploration into binary, and dives deeper into some of the ways to work with this counting system.

In this episode, we learn how to write and count when we only have two digits (0 and 1) to work with. Along the way, we also see how to convert between base 10, the counting system that we're all familiar with, and base 2, the number system for binary. We also do some math to prove how this conversion works under the hood!

Learn more about the concepts covered in this post here:

This whole series is sponsored by Heroku. A special thank you to Heroku for their ongoing support!

Top comments (8)

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thefluxapex profile image
Ian Pride • Edited

Thank you so much for these videos. I actually don't need them, but I am going to use them to help me teach my children while explaining the parts they don't understand. I have 7 (almost 8) year old twin boys and they are already a couple of years ahead (not moved ahead, but ahead in their classes) and I know they are ready because one day I explained the basis of decimal/binary/hex systems and they come back to me now repeating parts to me and showing me examples they were trying on paper. Even the wrong parts they get close. I think understanding binary and other numeric systems is one of the first things you should be learning if you want to learn how to code or even use computers...

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Vaidehi Joshi

This honestly just warms my heart!!! 💕 Your kids sound very smart, I hope they'll like these videos :D Also very glad to hear that you're starting them young, I wish I had learned this stuff earlier (but I guess it all turned out okay, haha) just because it is SO interesting and such an integral part of computing.

P.S. If you're introducing them to hexes too, you'll probably like the upcoming episodes of BaseCS!!!

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Ian Pride

Yeah, I'll be watching out for more.

I've been coding well over 20 years and I had to teach myself and, of course, it was even harder back then with far less online learning resources and countless help forums that were more elitist/condescending than helpful. I'm grateful my boys are being raised in a world where people are actually willing to help without judgment.

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Vaidehi Joshi

It was hard for me 4-5 years ago when I was trying to teach myself, too! Hopefully, future generations won't have as painful of an experience :)

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Fatma Ali

I really love your videos. It makes it all so easy to understand. I truly appreciate the time you took into making these 💕

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Vaidehi Joshi

That's so kind, thank you Fatma!! I'm so glad that you're enjoying them and that you appreciate them 💛

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Thiago Pacheco

Amazing videos! It is great to remember all these concepts.
Thank you for sharing that!

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Tim Downey

Really good production value on these Season 2 episodes!! 👏👏👏