Ask HN: Help...Found a gaping hole in my low-level knowledge

8 points

11 years ago

So I have an on-site interview in 2 weeks with a respectable hardcore software company, and part of the interview prep stuff that was given to me was this excellent article by Steve Yegge: https://sites.google.com/site/steveyegge2/five-essential-phone-screen-questions

Area 5 in the article was a wake up call, because although I've been writing code and doing web dev since I was 12, I had never heard of bitwise operators like '>>' and '^' ever in my life! I need to learn these topics, and fast, since I don't have much time for my big interview. And since I'm a person who does a lot better when I understand the underlying theory, rather than simply memorizing techniques, I would really appreciate a short book, or even articles to get me up to speed on bits, bytes and binary for a practical, low-level programmer.

Can anyone please share a short and practical guide suitable for a person who has many years experience with high level languages like Python?

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