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Spiritual_Jaguar4685 t1_je1vjar wrote

Not dumb, a great question.

On the microprocessor level the hardware is designed to always read a certain number of digits, called "bits" in this case, and 4 bits become a "nibble", 8 bits are a "byte".

So a 16 bit microprocessor would read the value "one" as

0000 0000 0000 0001

and read "ten" as

0000 0000 0000 1010

So in older days, the processor size was a big deal, I played a lot of video games so I remember that the Nintendo was 8-bit, we then 16-bit systems (Sega and Super Nintendo). and then 32/64 bit processors with Nintendo 64, etc.

For the most part we've stuck at 64 bit for our processors for many reasons.

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cmlobue t1_je3064h wrote

I remember capping my gold on the first Dragon Warrior game at 65535 because it used an unsigned 16-bit integer. I was amazed that it didn't generate an overflow error.

3

Jack2883 t1_je6ntv7 wrote

The lack of overflow error is due to good programmers checking the value and refusing to add to it if you hit the max.

3