Speaker 1: So imagine you are hungry and you ask a friend
Speaker 1: to make you a peanut butter sandwich.
Speaker 2: Okay, sounds good, right.
Speaker 1: You just say, hey, could you whip me up a
Speaker 1: PB and J. Yeah, And they just do it. They
Speaker 1: know to walk to the pantry, they get the bread,
Speaker 1: they unscrew the jar.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and they use a butter knife, not a spoon.
Speaker 2: It is all entirely seamless.
Speaker 1: Exactly because you both share this massive amount of unspoken
Speaker 1: human context.
Speaker 2: We really do. I mean, we rely on intuition to
Speaker 2: fill in the gaps of our communication every single day.
Speaker 1: But now imagine asking a painfully literal robot to do
Speaker 1: that exact same thing. Oh boy, Yeah, you say, put
Speaker 1: peanut butter on the bread. The robot grabs the unopened
Speaker 1: glass jar and just smashes it directly into the loaf
Speaker 1: of bread.
Speaker 2: Crunch, glass and peanut butter everywhere.
Speaker 1: Everywhere, because you know, you didn't explicitly tell it to
Speaker 1: unscrew the lids, so it didn't.
Speaker 2: It is basically the perfect recipe for disaster. When we
Speaker 2: try to talk to machines, we realize very quickly just
Speaker 2: how much we take our human intuition for granted.
Speaker 1: We really do.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we speak in generalities, but machines they only understand absolutes.
Speaker 1: And that is exactly why you are joining us for
Speaker 1: this deep dive today. We are looking at a world
Speaker 1: completely devoid of human.
Speaker 2: Intuition, a very literal world.
Speaker 1: Super literal. The mission for our deep dive is to
Speaker 1: explore how humans and machines actually communicate. And to do this,
Speaker 1: we're using Steven R. Davis's book CLUS plus for Dummies
Speaker 1: seventh edition as our guide today.
Speaker 2: Which is great because it serves as a fantastic foundation
Speaker 2: for this whole topic.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, but just to be clear to you listening, our
Speaker 1: goal today is not to have you memorize code or
Speaker 1: like learn syntax.
Speaker 2: No, we aren't building a mobile app here.
Speaker 1: Right, No apps today. Instead, we want to look under
Speaker 1: the hood of C plus plus to understand the really fascinating,
Speaker 1: highly literal way that computers actually think.
Speaker 2: We are going to see how a programming language acts
Speaker 2: as this ultimate middleman, you know, translating our messy human
Speaker 2: intentions into cold, hard binary reality.
Speaker 1: Because the underlying truth of computing is that processes are
Speaker 1: incredibly fast, but they are also incredibly stupid.
Speaker 2: Right, they do not speak English, They don't understand the
Speaker 2: concept of a sandwich.
Speaker 1: At all, not even a little bit.
Speaker 2: No, they only understand machine language, which is really nothing
Speaker 2: more than an endless see of microscopic electrical signals turning
Speaker 2: on and off billions of times a second.
Speaker 1: Okay, let's unpack this, because if they only speak voltage
Speaker 1: and we only speak human language, we obviously need a translator.
Speaker 1: We do. It is like we need to draft a
Speaker 1: peace treaty for this ultra efficient but painfully literal alien species.
Speaker 1: And that, I guess is the role of an intermediate
Speaker 1: language like C plus plus N.
Speaker 2: That is a great way to put it. You, as
Speaker 2: the human programmer, write what is known as a source
Speaker 2: file in a text.
Speaker 1: Editor, and that looks a bit like English, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it looks a.
Speaker 2: Bit like English combined with some heavy algebra. But the
Speaker 2: computer still cannot read that source file. It is still
Speaker 2: too human.
Speaker 1: So what happens to it?
Speaker 2: Well, a specialized program called a compiler has to step
Speaker 2: in to bridge that gap.
Speaker 1: Okay, I always hear that term compiling. Yeah, but what
Speaker 1: is it actually doing mechanically? I mean, it is not
Speaker 1: just reading the text aloud to the computer.
Speaker 2: No, it is entirely reconstructing it. The compiler takes your
Speaker 2: human readable source file and meticulously translates it into object code.
Speaker 1: Object code.
Speaker 2: Okay, right, but it doesn't stop there. It then performs
Speaker 2: a process called linking.
Speaker 1: What does linking do think of linking?
Speaker 2: Like taking different chapters written by different authors. Maybe you
Speaker 2: wrote one chapter and a standard C plus plus library
Speaker 2: provided another chapter. Oh I see, yeah, and it binds
Speaker 2: them all together into one cohesive, executable book that the
Speaker 2: computer's processor can actually open and run.
Speaker 1: That makes sense. And C plus plus is uniquely positions
Speaker 1: for this kind of heavy lifting, isn't it. Yeah, because
Speaker 1: the source mentions it is certified as a ninety nine
Speaker 1: point nine percent pure standard.
Speaker 2: Yes, and it is considered a low level language.
Speaker 1: Which honestly sounds like an insult, like it is less
Speaker 1: sophisticated or something.
Speaker 2: It does sound bad, But in this world, being low
Speaker 2: level is a massive compliment.
Speaker 1: Really. Why is that?
Speaker 2: Because being low level means it operates very close to
Speaker 2: the physical hardware of the computer. There are fewer layers
Speaker 2: of abstraction between your code and the actual silicon chips.
Speaker 1: Oh wow, so you are right down there near the metal.
Speaker 2: Exactly that proximity to the metal is why C plus
Speaker 2: plus is heavily used for things where performance absolutely counts,
Speaker 2: things like high end video games, graphics, rendering, direct hardware control.
Speaker 1: So it is blazingly fast.
Speaker 2: Extremely fast, but because it sits so close to the hardware,
Speaker 2: it forces the programmer to be incredibly precise.
Speaker 1: It demands that precision because, like we said earlier, it
Speaker 1: totally lacks that human intuition. Right.
Speaker 2: A computer does exactly what it is told, nothing more
Speaker 2: and nothing.
Speaker 1: Less, and C plus plus enforces this reality through some
Speaker 1: incredibly strict grammar rules.
Speaker 2: Right, oh, violently strict. For instance, the compiler will completely
Speaker 2: ignore all the blank spaces or tabs or empty lines
Speaker 2: you put in your code.
Speaker 1: Wait, really, even if I format it nicely so I
Speaker 1: can read it yep to.
Speaker 2: The machine, that is just called white space, and it
Speaker 2: just throws it out. It does not care about your formatting.
Speaker 2: But it is obsessively strict about capitalization.
Speaker 1: Right the case sensitivity, because if you type I int
Speaker 1: in all capital letters, it means absolutely nothing to the computer.
Speaker 2: Nothing at all. It will just stare at you blankly
Speaker 2: and probably throw an error that crashes your entire bills.
Speaker 1: But if you type in in all lowercase letters.
Speaker 2: Suddenly it understands you perfectly. It knows you are giving
Speaker 2: it specific vital command.
Speaker 1: That is wild. This strict literal nature really dictates everything
Speaker 1: about how we interact with the machine.
Speaker 2: It dictates everything. We can't just throw vague concepts or
Speaker 2: you know, floating ideas at a processor.
Speaker 1: So what do we do instead?
Speaker 2: We have to package our data, our numbers, our text,
Speaker 2: our logical states. We have to put them into very specific,
Speaker 2: rigid containers before the machine will even acknowledge them.
Speaker 1: Okay, so if the computer is this pain fully literal
Speaker 1: with our commands, how does it handle our actual information?
Speaker 2: Well, it uses variables, right.
Speaker 1: But if I think about basic algebra, a variable is
Speaker 1: just the magic box. You say x equals one, and
Speaker 1: then later you can say x equals an entire sentence,
Speaker 1: and the math just rolls with it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, human math is flexible like that. But C plus
Speaker 2: plus does not allow that kind of freedom, not at all.
Speaker 1: You have to tell the computer exactly what shape the
Speaker 1: box is before you are allowed to put anything inside
Speaker 1: it exactly.
Speaker 2: C plus plus is what we call a strongly typed language.
Speaker 1: Strongly typed.
Speaker 2: Yes, every variable is essentially a holding tank and you
Speaker 2: must declare the exact type, the exact physical dimensions of
Speaker 2: that holding tank in the computer's memory before you ever
Speaker 2: use it.
Speaker 1: And the most common box is that lowercase T we
Speaker 1: just mentioned right, which stands for integer.
Speaker 2: Right, whole numbers one to negative fifty.
Speaker 1: But relying on integers introduces a massive mechanical flaw. The
Speaker 1: book calls it the truncation problem.
Speaker 2: Yes, this is where the literal nature of the machine
Speaker 2: really bites the programmer.
Speaker 1: Let me use a real world analogy to explain how
Speaker 1: bizarre this is to you listening. Imagine you are trying
Speaker 1: to split three leftover pizzas among three friends.
Speaker 2: Okay, you, me and another buddy.
Speaker 1: Right, But the accountant managing our pizza party only understands
Speaker 1: whole pizzas. They are literally incapable of comprehending a fraction.
Speaker 2: They do not have the mental architecture for a slice.
Speaker 1: Exactly an integer. Only accountant handling the catering.
Speaker 2: That sounds terrible.
Speaker 1: It is. So we have three pizzas. I take the
Speaker 1: first one and divide it by three people. The account
Speaker 1: looks at it and says, one divided by three is
Speaker 1: less than one whole pizza. Therefore, the result.
Speaker 2: Is zero, and they physically take the slices and throw
Speaker 2: them into the.
Speaker 1: Trash, right into the trash. You take the second pizza
Speaker 1: divide by three, the accountant truncates it again zero into.
Speaker 2: The trash, and our buddy does the same thing zero exactly.
Speaker 1: We started with three hole pizzas, we divide them up
Speaker 1: to eat, and the computer mathematically calculates that we now
Speaker 1: have zero plus zero plus zero, which is zero pizzas.
Speaker 2: It is infuriating to a human, but it is flawlessly
Speaker 2: logical to the machine.
Speaker 1: That is so frustrating.
Speaker 2: It is if you use integer math in C plus
Speaker 2: plus to divide one by three, the fractional part isn't
Speaker 2: rounded down, it is simply lopped off.
Speaker 1: It just vanishes.
Speaker 2: It vanishes into the ether because the integer holding tank
Speaker 2: literally has no physical memory space to store a decimal point.
Speaker 1: Wait, so if it just throws away the traction, I
Speaker 1: am literally losing data every single time I do basic.
Speaker 2: Division, every single time.
Speaker 1: Why on Earth can't the computer just figure it out? Yeah,
Speaker 1: why can't it just see that one divided by three
Speaker 1: is a third?
Speaker 2: Well, the creators of the language did provide a tool
Speaker 2: to handle fractions, but it comes with a significant architectural.
Speaker 1: Catch, of course it does. What is the catch?
Speaker 2: To store decimals, you have to use a completely different
Speaker 2: type of holding tank, a variable type called a float,
Speaker 2: which is short for floating point number.
Speaker 1: Oh, or you can use its bigger cousin the double
Speaker 1: right exactly.
Speaker 2: The boxes are specifically engineered to handle the decimal point.
Speaker 1: Oh. Perfect problem solve, Then we just use floats for
Speaker 1: everything and fire the integer account.
Speaker 2: If only were that simple. There is a constant, unavoidable
Speaker 2: trade off in computer science between speed and accuracy. Ah
Speaker 2: the catch right, Integers are lightning fast. The computer's processor
Speaker 2: can crunch millions of integer calculations in the blink of
Speaker 2: an eye because they are so simple exactly. Floats require
Speaker 2: vastly more computational work. But the real danger isn't just
Speaker 2: the speed. It is that floats introduce round off errors.
Speaker 1: Round off errors because a computer, as a physical object
Speaker 1: doesn't understand the concept of infinity precisely.
Speaker 2: Mathematically, one divided by three is point three three three
Speaker 2: repeating forever right infinitely. But a computer only has a
Speaker 2: finite amount of physical memory. A float variable can only
Speaker 2: hold about seven digits of accuracy before it runs out
Speaker 2: of space, so it just stops. It stops. It stores
Speaker 2: that infinite concept as a very finite three point three
Speaker 2: three three three three three. And if you take that
Speaker 2: float and multiply it back by three, you do not
Speaker 2: get ten. You get nine point nine nine nine nine.
Speaker 1: Oh well, think about that. If you are checking out
Speaker 1: of an online cart or looking at your banking app,
Speaker 1: someone is stealing fractions of ascent.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the math just doesn't add up perfectly.
Speaker 1: Or worse, if you are calculating the trajectory of a
Speaker 1: spacecraft returning to orbit, nine point nine nine nine nine
Speaker 1: is not ten. That tiny missing fraction could mean missing
Speaker 1: the atmosphere entirely.
Speaker 2: It is a real problem. Now, the larger double box
Speaker 2: tries to mitigate this.
Speaker 1: How much larger is it?
Speaker 2: Well, an inbox has a limit of about two billion,
Speaker 2: which sounds enormous until you realize modern processors perform billions
Speaker 2: of operations every single second.
Speaker 1: Right, they chew through two billion instantly exactly.
Speaker 2: The double box can hold massively larger numbers, up to
Speaker 2: ten to the thirty eighth power.
Speaker 1: That is a staggering number.
Speaker 2: It is huge. But even the mighty double starts losing
Speaker 2: accuracy and generating garbage data after about thirteen or sixteen digits,
Speaker 2: you just can't win. You really can. You can have
Speaker 2: massive numbers with loose precision or small numbers with type precision,
Speaker 2: but the physical limits of memory mean you cannot have both.
Speaker 1: So we are basically forced to store our data in
Speaker 1: these inherently flawed containers. We have integers that are blazingly
Speaker 1: fast but throw away fractions, and floats that are mathematically
Speaker 1: precise but slightly inaccurate.
Speaker 2: That is the reality of the hardware.
Speaker 1: But once you have your data sitting in those flawed boxes,
Speaker 1: you have to make them interact. You have to get
Speaker 1: the computer to actually make decisions.
Speaker 2: And getting a machine to make a logical choice based
Speaker 2: on that flawed math is surprisingly dangerous. I can imagine
Speaker 2: decision making is what makes a program appear intelligent. You know,
Speaker 2: if this specific condition happens, execute that specific command in C.
Speaker 1: Plus plus ah. The core of that decision making process
Speaker 1: is boolean logic, isn't it, which is handled by a
Speaker 1: tiny variable type called bool.
Speaker 2: Yes, named after George Boole, the nineteenth century mathematician.
Speaker 1: Right, and a bool variable is the simplest box of all.
Speaker 1: It can only hold one of two values true.
Speaker 2: Or false exactly, though in the early days C plus
Speaker 2: plus just use integers to represent this logic.
Speaker 1: How does that work?
Speaker 2: A zero meant false and absolutely any other number meant true.
Speaker 1: Oh that is interesting. That still works under the hood today.
Speaker 1: But using the words true and false makes the code
Speaker 1: much more readable for humans.
Speaker 2: It definitely does.
Speaker 1: But here's where that strict, unforgiving grammar comes back to
Speaker 1: haunt us. Let's talk about the catastrophic difference between typing
Speaker 1: a single equal sign and typing two equal signs.
Speaker 2: Oh man, this is a rite of passage. Every programmer
Speaker 2: makes this mistake at least once. Really, Oh yeah, A
Speaker 2: single equal sign is an assignment operator. It is a command.
Speaker 2: A command right, It means take the value on the
Speaker 2: right side and violently shove it into the box on
Speaker 2: the left side.
Speaker 1: Shove it in there, okay.
Speaker 2: But two equal signs is an entirely different concept. It
Speaker 2: is a question. It means are these two things currently identical?
Speaker 1: So if I am writing code for an e commerce
Speaker 1: site and I want to ask the computer is the
Speaker 1: user's shopping cart equal to zero? But I accidentally use
Speaker 1: one equal sign, then you are in trouble because I'm
Speaker 1: not asking a question anymore. I am actively emptying their cart.
Speaker 1: I am commanding the computer to set their cart to.
Speaker 2: Zero, and the compiler will happily execute that command. Even
Speaker 2: if you buried it inside an if.
Speaker 1: Statement, It just does it.
Speaker 2: It views the destruction of the shopping cart as a
Speaker 2: highly successful operation. It ruins the entire logic of your program.
Speaker 1: That is terrifying.
Speaker 2: It is. But even if you master the grammar and
Speaker 2: use the double equal sign correctly to ask a question,
Speaker 2: you still run headfirst into the math quirks we just discussed.
Speaker 2: Oh right, You should virtually never use the equality operator
Speaker 2: the double equals to compare two floating point numbers.
Speaker 1: Because of the roundoff errors we talked about. Exactly, if
Speaker 1: the computer is asking is ten exactly equal to nine
Speaker 1: point nine nine nine nine, it will boldly shout false,
Speaker 1: even though any human looking at the equation knows the
Speaker 1: math was supposed to result in ten.
Speaker 2: Exact equality is a total myth when it comes to floats,
Speaker 2: because of the microscopic inaccuracies and how they are stored,
Speaker 2: you always have to ask if they are close enough.
Speaker 2: Close enough, Yeah, you have to write extra code to
Speaker 2: check if the difference between the two numbers is incredibly small.
Speaker 2: Rather than asking if they match.
Speaker 1: Perfectly, that is so tedious. But the way the computer
Speaker 1: evaluates multiple logical questions at once is where it gets
Speaker 1: genuinely wild.
Speaker 2: To me, Oh, you mean short circuiting.
Speaker 1: Yes, C plus plus is secretly incredibly lazy.
Speaker 2: Well, we prefer to call it ruthlessly efficient. In computer science,
Speaker 2: we call this short circuit evaluation.
Speaker 1: Okay, let me give an example. Let's say you have
Speaker 1: a logical A and D statement. For example, I will
Speaker 1: only go outside if it is sunny. A and D
Speaker 1: I have my sound glasses.
Speaker 2: Makes sense.
Speaker 1: Both of those things must be true for the whole
Speaker 1: sentence to be true.
Speaker 2: Right In C plus plus A, you represent that A
Speaker 2: and D with a double Ampersand.
Speaker 1: Now if I look out the window and it is
Speaker 1: pouring down, that first condition is its sunny.
Speaker 2: Yeah is false, completely false.
Speaker 1: And because it's an A and D statement, the entire
Speaker 1: operation is already ruined. Doesn't it matter if I have
Speaker 1: my sunglasses in my pocket or not, I'm not going outside.
Speaker 2: And the computer's processor recognizes this inevitability, it does yes,
Speaker 2: to save precious microseconds of processing power. If the first
Speaker 2: condition in an A and D statement evaluates to false
Speaker 2: C plus plus completely ignores the second condition.
Speaker 1: It just skips it.
Speaker 2: It's short circuits. It refuses to even look at the
Speaker 2: rest of the line of code. The same logic applies
Speaker 2: to an our statement too. If the first condition is true,
Speaker 2: it skips the second one entirely because the overall statement
Speaker 2: has already succeeded.
Speaker 1: But think about the massive trap hidden in that laziness.
Speaker 1: The side effects, Right, What if that second condition wasn't
Speaker 1: just checking a value. What if it had actual operational
Speaker 1: instructions baked into.
Speaker 2: It, like the increment operator.
Speaker 1: Exactly, the plus plus which tells a variable to increase
Speaker 1: its value by one.
Speaker 2: This is a classic example of silent failure.
Speaker 1: Explain how that works.
Speaker 2: Imagine you write a complex statement that says, is variable
Speaker 2: A greater than variable B A and d is variable
Speaker 2: C plus plus greater than variable D.
Speaker 1: Okay, So if variable A is not greater than b,
Speaker 1: the computer stops dead in its tracks.
Speaker 2: It never even glances at variable C, which means variable
Speaker 2: C never gets incremented.
Speaker 1: Never happened if variable C was supposed to be tracking,
Speaker 1: like how many times a player tried to log in,
Speaker 1: or how many seconds had passed, that data is just gone.
Speaker 2: It is lost forever.
Speaker 1: The program didn't crash, it just silently failed to do
Speaker 1: its job because the computer was trying to save a microsecond.
Speaker 2: And this is why we have to ask, how do
Speaker 2: you build a stable, reliable digital world when your foundational
Speaker 2: tools behave.
Speaker 1: This way it seems impossible.
Speaker 2: The answer is a philosophy called defensive programming.
Speaker 1: Defensive programming, Yeah.
Speaker 2: Writing code isn't just about getting the syntax right so
Speaker 2: the compiler doesn't throw an air. It is about deeply
Speaker 2: anticipating how the machine will stock yiberally lazily optimize your logic.
Speaker 1: You have to outsmart it.
Speaker 2: You have to actively protect the program from the machine's
Speaker 2: own ruthless efficiency.
Speaker 1: It's almost like you have to stop thinking like a
Speaker 1: human and start thinking like the machine just to control it.
Speaker 2: You really do.
Speaker 1: And all of that ruthless efficiency, you know, the stript rules,
Speaker 1: the flawed math, it all stems from the physical hardware.
Speaker 2: Itself, the actual silicon, which.
Speaker 1: Brings us to the very bottom layer of our deep dive. Today,
Speaker 1: we've talked about how C plus plus translates human logic,
Speaker 1: but what is it actually translating into down at the
Speaker 1: absolute bottom.
Speaker 2: It is translating it all the way down to the
Speaker 2: metal to pure binary.
Speaker 1: See human math feels so absolute, like a universal law,
Speaker 1: but it's totally biological when you think about.
Speaker 2: It, very biological.
Speaker 1: We count in base ten the decimal system, we use
Speaker 1: the digit zero through nine. Why do we do that
Speaker 1: because we have ten fingers.
Speaker 2: If human beings had evolved with twelve fingers, our entire
Speaker 2: mathematical foundation from birth would be base twelve.
Speaker 1: That is so weird to think about it.
Speaker 2: But computers don't have human hands. They essentially have two fingers.
Speaker 2: They are built out of billions of microscopic electrical switches,
Speaker 2: and a physical switch can only exist in one of
Speaker 2: two states, on or off, true or false one or
Speaker 2: is zero.
Speaker 1: Base two binary. You know, there's a great joke in
Speaker 1: the source material about this. If my dog had invented
Speaker 1: a number system, it would be base eight or octal
Speaker 1: base eight. Yeah, because if you look at a dog's
Speaker 1: front pause, he's only got eight visible toes.
Speaker 2: That is hilarious but completely true. It illustrates perfectly how
Speaker 2: arbitrary counting systems really are.
Speaker 1: Totally arbitrary.
Speaker 2: The math works identically in any base but reading base
Speaker 2: two is a nightmare for human eyes.
Speaker 1: It can't even imagine, like the number.
Speaker 2: One twenty three in our familiar decimal system translates to
Speaker 2: zero one one, zero eleven in binary.
Speaker 1: That's just visual noise.
Speaker 2: It is your eyes just glaze over trying to parse
Speaker 2: a screen full of that.
Speaker 1: So how do programmers deal with that visual noise without
Speaker 1: going completely cross eyed?
Speaker 2: They create mental bridges. First, they group those individual binary digits,
Speaker 2: which we call bits, into packages.
Speaker 1: Of eight and that is a byte.
Speaker 2: Yes, an eight bit package is a byte. And to
Speaker 2: make those bites readable to humans, programmers use hexadecimal.
Speaker 1: Hectadesimal, which is base sixteen right, and hexadecimal uses the
Speaker 1: numbers zero through nine, and then it borrows the letters
Speaker 1: A through f to represent the numbers ten to fifteen
Speaker 1: right exactly.
Speaker 2: By using base sixteen, programmers can compress that long, dizzying
Speaker 2: string of ones and zeros into something short, punchy, and
Speaker 2: recognizable like seven.
Speaker 1: B seven B That is way easier to read.
Speaker 2: It doesn't change the underlying on and off switches. It
Speaker 2: just acts as a visual shorthand a bridge between the
Speaker 2: physical silicon switches and human comprehension.
Speaker 1: Wait, we don't just process numbers. What about characters, text,
Speaker 1: the alphabet, All of that has to become numbers too.
Speaker 2: Right, Absolutely it does. When you declare a chart variable
Speaker 2: in C plus plus to hold a single letter or
Speaker 2: a wide char for bigger characters, the computer is secretly
Speaker 2: just storing a number that corresponds to that letter in
Speaker 2: a massive index.
Speaker 1: Oh, like a secret code.
Speaker 2: Basically, the capital letter A might just be the number
Speaker 2: sixty five.
Speaker 1: Okay, I see, But as.
Speaker 2: Software expanded globally, we needed much bigger boxes to hold
Speaker 2: thousands of unique symbols for complex languages like Chinese or Arabic.
Speaker 1: Right, sixty five only gets you so.
Speaker 2: Far, exactly. That is why encoding formats like UTF eight,
Speaker 2: UTF sixteen, and UTF thirty two were created.
Speaker 1: I've seen those terms in my browser settings. Yeah.
Speaker 2: They use more bits, meaning more physical switches to provide
Speaker 2: enough unique numerical combinations to represent every single human symbol
Speaker 2: on Earth.
Speaker 1: Wow. When you really step back and look at this
Speaker 1: entire system, all of those strict C plus plus grammar rules,
Speaker 1: the intruncation throwing away pizza slices, the float round off errors,
Speaker 1: dropping digits, the lazy short circuiting a and d statements.
Speaker 1: It is a lot to take in, it is, but
Speaker 1: they all exist because we are attempting an impossible magic trick.
Speaker 2: How do you mean?
Speaker 1: We are taking the incredible, complex, nuanced analog reality of
Speaker 1: human existence and we are forcing it through a tiny,
Speaker 1: rigid physical pipe of billions of microscopic switches that can
Speaker 1: only ever say yes or no.
Speaker 2: That is exactly what programming is.
Speaker 1: And what does this all mean for you listening to
Speaker 1: this deep dive right now? It means that every single
Speaker 1: app you use on your phone, every high definition video
Speaker 1: you scream to your TV, every digital photograph you've ever
Speaker 1: taken of your family, it.
Speaker 2: Is all ultimately just a carefully orchestrated illusion.
Speaker 1: It really is. It's a towering, fragile skyscraper built entirely
Speaker 1: out of microscopic ones and zeros, bundled into bytes, abstracted
Speaker 1: into hexadecimals, managed by flawed variables, and meticulously translated by compilers.
Speaker 2: And that skyscraper is kept from collapsing every single day
Speaker 2: by programmers who have learned exactly how to draft those
Speaker 2: piece treaties with the alien intelligence of the processor.
Speaker 1: C plus plus is our strict, uncompromising translator in that relationship.
Speaker 1: Today we've explored the literal minded nature of data variables,
Speaker 1: the hidden changers of computer math, the lazy efficiency of
Speaker 1: short circuit logic, and the binary reality beneath the metal.
Speaker 2: We covered a lot of ground, we did.
Speaker 1: But before we wrap up, I had this realization during
Speaker 1: our conversation about the increment operator. You know, the plus
Speaker 1: plus we talked.
Speaker 2: About earlier, Oh, the one that gets trapped in the
Speaker 2: short circuit right.
Speaker 1: Adding one to a number is the most common mathematical
Speaker 1: action in all of programming. But the reason the plus
Speaker 1: plus operator actually exists in C plus plus is because
Speaker 1: early microprocessors in the nineteen seventies physically had a specific
Speaker 1: hardware instruction wired into them just for adding one.
Speaker 2: It was faster than general addition exactly.
Speaker 1: Hardware memory and processing power were so unbelievably limited back
Speaker 1: then that saving a few micro instructions was a massive deal.
Speaker 1: So the software language evolved to include plus plus specifically
Speaker 1: to take advantage of that one physical wire.
Speaker 2: The physical constraints the hardware literally dictated the vocabulary of the.
Speaker 1: Software, which leaves me with a chilling thought to end
Speaker 1: on for you listening, if a physical wire from a
Speaker 1: nineteen seventies microchip permanently altered how we write code today.
Speaker 1: How much of our modern cutting edge software is still
Speaker 1: being shaped by the past.
Speaker 2: That is a great question.
Speaker 1: The very code running global high frequency finance, or simulating
Speaker 1: protein folding, or powering the artificial intelligence that is fundamentally
Speaker 1: changing our world right now, how much of it is
Speaker 1: still being steered by the invisible ghosts of nineteen seventies
Speaker 1: hardware limitations.
Speaker 2: It really makes you wonder who or what is actually
Speaker 2: giving the instructions it does.
Speaker 1: Next time you ask someone for a peanut butter and
Speaker 1: jelly sandwich and they intuitively know not to smash the
Speaker 1: glass jar into the bread, take a moment to be
Speaker 1: grateful for human intuition. Absolutely, thank you for joining us
Speaker 1: on this deep dive. Keep questioning the digital world around you.
Speaker 1: We'll see you next time.