Memory is something (almost) no computer can do without. In todays world the saying goes: the more memory the better. But the way computers uses memory is very different than they did only a few decades ago and “more memory” does not always equals better performance. A small introduction and history in memory usage.
TCP is one of the core protocols for the TCP/IP suite. It provides a reliable data connection without you needing to worry about errors, congestion and other communication problems that haunt the internet. But how does TCP work? It’s another edition of the back-to-basics series.
I occasionally get into discussions where I find that other lack some basic understanding of the elementary systems which he or she has to work with everyday. Today was such a day: we went into a discussion about that it would be so much nicer to have unsigned tinyint (in mysql) range from -127..128 instead of -128..127. Although it COULD be changed, it would go against almost all rudimentary principles of numeric systems used inside computers, but this not always known to PHP-programmers.
So today I introduce the “back-to-basics” posts, which talks about all kind of rudimentary principles in computer technology. These principles found the basics of that what you use each and every day, and even though you probably not aware of them, they still are there..
The first b2b post is about the two’s complement signing system… let’s take a look: