Understanding Binary, Denary, and Hexadecimal

Binary, denary, and hex are just different ways computers count.

We use denary, base ten, because we have ten fingers. Computers use binary,

base two, because they only understand on and off switches. Hex,

base sixteen, is just a shortcut to make binary less painful to read. When you see FF

in code, that's actually 255 in denary or 11111111 in binary. It's the same number,

just wearing different clothes. Every programmer needs to know this because memory addresses,

color codes, and debugging all use these systems. Master these three and suddenly code

stops looking like random gibberish. It's literally just counting in a different language.