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May 26

Old edition of C#

I ran across a guide to using C#, published in 2002. I see from C Sharp (programming language)#Versions that it's been modified many times since then. If you're trying to understand the current version of the language, would this book be at all useful, or is it useful only for people looking into the history of the language? I know nothing of programming languages, whether this one or others. Nyttend (talk) 23:51, 26 May 2026 (UTC)

Someone asked the exact same question in 2010! https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/21260/is-it-ok-to-learn-from-c-2002-materials and 2019! https://www.reddit.com/r/csharp/comments/ccf1md/seeing_if_a_book_holds_up/ Seems to be a resounding "No."

Willing to share what book this is, for posterity? :) In solidarity, Aaron Liu (talk) 02:46, 27 May 2026 (UTC)

I can do that, but not right now. I'm a librarian, and I ran across this at work; now I'm on the train heading home, so you'll have to wait until tomorrow :-) Nyttend (talk) 07:44, 27 May 2026 (UTC)

User:Aaron Liu, this is Advanced C♯ programming, ISBN 0072224177 — it even predates ISBN13s :-) Nyttend (talk) 00:09, 28 May 2026 (UTC)

I cannot think of a reason why this title might be of interest to people looking into the history of C#. The successive versions are well documented. Some historians may be more interested in examining the sources of inspiration for and driving forces behind the changes, but will not find answers in this text, whose author is not a C# specialist but more of a generalist having authored dozens of such books on a wide variety of software tools and frameworks.  ​‑‑Lambiam 21:58, 28 May 2026 (UTC)

I'm just curious what book is this popular :). In solidarity, Aaron Liu (talk) 01:45, 29 May 2026 (UTC)

[hey, this might sound impatient, but I'm sorry; I didn't mean to sound that way.] User:Lambiam, we're a research university; we might have researchers looking at the history of computing manuals, whether from a computer science perspective or a sociological/publishing-history perspective, and this one wouldn't be exactly replaceable with contemporary or later books by other authors. And User:Aaron Liu, I just ran across it on the shelf as part of a project to identify outdated works, which I'll be proposing to move to our offsite storage area; we combine a just-in-time and just-in-case approach with lesser-used materials, keeping them just in case they're needed, but reserving the publicly accessible shelving for the materials that are more likely to be useful. I already knew that I'd propose moving things like the 2002 edition of an Excel manual and the guide to Windows 8's new features, but I didn't know enough about C# to decide whether it ought to be on my list. Nyttend (talk) 20:22, 29 May 2026 (UTC)

For every book there is probably some reason for it to be useful to someone for some purpose. I tried to address the specific issue whether it is it useful for people looking into the history of C# and came up blank. This is a different issue than the history of hefty how-to manuals for application programming.  ​‑‑Lambiam 21:13, 29 May 2026 (UTC)

May 30

Video Wallpaper

Sorry if this is too vague, but does anyone remember a GIF phone wallpaper (there were several) where a scantily clad woman or man "washes" the screen? ~2026-22534-68 (talk) 17:45, 30 May 2026 (UTC)

No, I do not, sadly. ~2026-33106-46 (talk) 02:53, 6 June 2026 (UTC)

I can recall such a thing as a PC screensaver, from last century. HiLo48 (talk) 08:41, 7 June 2026 (UTC)

I recall that - though it was a screensaver, not a wallpaper - but I can find nothing via the usual searches. Matt Deres (talk) 02:08, 8 June 2026 (UTC)

This is my first time hearing of such a thing but I've found a few wallpapers that might fit your description:. Panamitsu ✨ 03:03, 8 June 2026 (UTC)

June 3

Similarities between coding on the Internet and editing wikis

How can coding on the Internet, and editing wikis, be similar to each other? ~2026-33106-46 (talk) 23:25, 3 June 2026 (UTC)

How could they not be similar? Wikipedia uses markup-language (e.g. html), which is a version of code/programming language. It's not particularly noticeable when doing simple text as much of the heavy lifting is done in the back, which is where the actual code lives. Without an editor (or the WYSIWYG editor) you'd have to make all the text, table and image boxes yourself, which is already closer to writing a program (or at least defining the Graphical user interface). Rmvandijk (talk) 06:57, 4 June 2026 (UTC)

Albeit as a more soft-core version (in the sense that bugs are less of a nightmare to fix and syntax not as rigid). But still, one can say that Python is a soft-core version of C++, too. And Wiki editing can get more hardcore if one starts to e.g., creating templates. 海盐沙冰 _{/ aka irisChronomia / Talk} 09:51, 4 June 2026 (UTC)

Version control systems, used on the internet for collaborative editing of software code, are somewhat similar to the edit history of wiki pages, with concepts such as "blame", "conflict", and "merge".  Card Zero  (talk) ※ 21:43, 5 June 2026 (UTC)

I wish we can have blame as part of the default user interface on Wikipedia. 海盐沙冰 _{/ aka irisChronomia / Talk} 09:40, 7 June 2026 (UTC)

June 7

Why do computers still use binary?

Modern computers are incredibly powerful and can perform trillions of operations per second. Given this, why do computers still fundamentally use binary (0s and 1s) rather than a more complex numbering system such as decimal (base 10) or ternary (base 3)? What advantages does binary provide in electronic hardware design? ArcadeFair (talk) 07:36, 7 June 2026 (UTC)

It's a matter of practicality. Binary transistors and storage medium are profoundly easy to make - you just have to define 2 different states for them, which happens to be a perfect fit for electric circuitry - on and off. And since we can chain multiple binary bits together to represent any other base, from base-16 (4bit) to base-16777216 (24bit, you can go crazy with increasing bits here), we just hold a decimal value inside 4 binary transistors (with state 11-16 being either naively ignored, or utilized by making every character base-16) instead of trying to make 1 single transistors with 10 different states. 海盐沙冰 _{/ aka irisChronomia / Talk} 08:03, 7 June 2026 (UTC)

tl;dr: imagine a binary switch; then imagine four of the same switches, one next to another.

then, imagine a switch with 10 possible states. that would be much, much more expensive to make; it'll also be much easier to break than four binary switches. if a binary switch gets clunky, and it can't stay perfectly stable at some peculiar angle, it doesn't matter - you only care if it's up or down, and being "not close to perfect up position enough" doesn't bother you at all: as long as it's still on the same side, no information is lost.

now imagine a 10-state switch shifting its angle for some 30 degrees. that'll be much worse, because now it's probably going from one state to another, and you lose the information held in that switch in the process. 海盐沙冰 _{/ aka irisChronomia / Talk} 08:11, 7 June 2026 (UTC)

Also note that many algorithms are much simpler when working with binary numbers, e.g. multiplication or addition. You have much fewer cases to consider. It may seem simpler to do in in decimal, but that is just because we are used to it. There are 9+8+7+6+5+4+2+1 ways to create an underflow when subtracting two decimal digits, with 9 different possible underflows. There is just one way (0-1) to create one when subtracting binary digits. And so on. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 22:55, 7 June 2026 (UTC)

There are other practicality concerns for non-binary_{not a gender noun^[Humor]} systems. Let's use base-10 as an example here.

Say if you want to store a bunch of Yes/No values (aka. booleans). We can dumbify our hyper-futuristic 10-state transistor into a lame, binary one, by only defining two meaningful states, such as "state 0-4 for No, and 5-9 for Yes".

We can also pay some respect to the true potential of this engineering miracle by holding 3 different Yes/No values in it simultaneously. For example, we may define state 0 to state 9 as follows:

0 NNN 4 YYN

1 YNN 5 YNY

2 NYN 6 NYY

3 NNY 7 YYY

With the state 8 and 9 left unused.

This creates another problem: in order to use the decimal transistors to its full potential, you need to do operations (read/store/compute) on booleans in batches of 3, and also have to create some complex logic for the computer to be able to treat a decimal as if it were 3 booleans fused together (and to do it efficiently). This likely has devastating implications on how computer codes are written and optimized, and the inefficiency of said computer when running unoptimized codes. _{I know this last sentence requires some explaining, but I struggle to formulate my thoughts on this here for now. If someone'd like to pickup for me, I'd start with the example / comparisons to Netburst and VLIW.} 4:43p, edited 5:24p (+8) 海盐沙冰 _{/ aka irisChronomia / Talk} 08:43, 7 June 2026 (UTC)

Related articles: decimal computer and ternary computer and perhaps unconventional computing. Matt Deres (talk) 21:25, 7 June 2026 (UTC)