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this post was submitted on 04 Sep 2024
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There is no reason whatsoever to use base 16 for computer storage it is both unconnected to technology and common usage it is worse than either base 2 or 10
I guess? I just pulled that example out of my ass earlier, thinking well, hexadecimal is used heavily in computing, so maybe something with powers of 16 would do just fine.
At any rate, my point is that using a prefix system that is different and easily distinguishable from the metric SI prefixes would have been way better.
They could have easily used base 2 which is actually connected to how the hardware works and just called it something else
I realized why I didn't think of base 2 in my previous reply. For one, hexadecimal (base 16) often used in really low-level programming, as a shorthand for working in base 2 because base 2 is unwieldy. Octal (base 8) was also used, but not so much nowadays. Furthermore, even when working in base 2, they're often grouped into four bits: a nibble. A nibble corresponds to one hexadecimal digit.
Now, I suppose that we're just going to use powers of two, not base-2, so maybe it'd help if we do a comparison. Below is a table that compares some powers of two, the binary prefixes, and the system I described earlier:
Each row of the table (except for the rows for 2^10^ and 2^50^) would be requiring a new prefix if we're to be working with powers of 2 (four apart, and more if it'd be three apart instead). Meanwhile, using powers of 16 would require less prefixes, but would require larger numerals before changing over to the next prefix (a maximum of 16^4^ - 1 = 2^16^ - 1 = 65 535)
One thing that works to your argument's favor is the fact that 1024 = 2^10^. But I think that's what caused this entire MiB vs. MB confusion in the first place.
However, having said all that, I would have been happy with just using an entirely different set of prefixes, and kept the values based on 2^10^.