It's because kilo means 1000 in scientific units, so in terms of SI, kilobyte (like kilogram or kilometer) means 1000. However, in the computer world (the world we care about), computers don't work in base 10 but rather base 2, which means it's easier to use the closest power of 2 that gives us 1000. This is 2^10, which is 1024. Similarly, a megabyte is 2^20 bytes, which is 1048576 (not 1000000).
It all gets confusing because we use kilo (which means 1000) to mean two things. If you want to be correct in terms of standards, it'd be 1000, but if you told a computer you wanted 1000 bytes, it'd think you wanted .98 kilobytes instead of exactly 1. Similarly, if you asked a computer for 1024 bytes, it'd think you wanted exactly 1 kilobyte instead of 1.02
In this case, since we're dealing with a program file size, we'd always use the 1024 version to measure the size. File sizes, disk sizes, memory sizes, etc. all use the 1024 version. Although if we were dealing with network speeds, we'd measure it in terms of 1000, 1000000, etc. (another complication which is unnecessary but unfortunately we're stuck with for now).
Edit: Of course it's still up to Sonnyb, but if he doesn't say what he wants before April 1st, it'd make more sense to use the computer version of a kilobyte since that's what we're working with.
We're told to use SI units on the wiki pages because it is unrealistic to ask people to perform math based on 1024 units rather than 1000. It's much easier to just truncate the number of bytes reported in Petit Computer by 3 decimal places rather than do something like 324567 / 1024.
@Mystman, if you need to free up some bytes, simply look for something like
FOR I=0 TO WHATEVER
And replace it with
FOR I=0TO WHATEVER
You can do this as long as the thing just before the "TO" is a number and not a variable. For instance, you could not do this if it's FOR I=A
Edit: Petit Computer actually rounds up (as in it pads your program) in order to fill up the next 8 bytes. For instance, if your program was 7 bytes, it would round up to 8. If your program was 793 bytes, it would report 800 bytes. In this case, I really do feel that even programs up to 1000 bytes should be accepted, as we don't actually know if it's strictly less than.
I added a high score feature because Wynaut, even though this game is so badly balanced that you're guaranteed to reach the score cap. This game used to overflow.
It's a prequel, but there's no plot. Don't ask for one...
...
EDIT: Whoops, forgot to mention. it's 928 bytes o' funsies.
Randomouscrap98 wrote: It's because kilo means 1000 in scientific units, so in terms of SI, kilobyte (like kilogram or kilometer) means 1000. However, in the computer world (the world we care about), computers don't work in base 10 but rather base 2, which means it's easier to use the closest power of 2 that gives us 1000. This is 2^10, which is 1024. Similarly, a megabyte is 2^20 bytes, which is 1048576 (not 1000000).
It all gets confusing because we use kilo (which means 1000) to mean two things. If you want to be correct in terms of standards, it'd be 1000, but if you told a computer you wanted 1000 bytes, it'd think you wanted .98 kilobytes instead of exactly 1. Similarly, if you asked a computer for 1024 bytes, it'd think you wanted exactly 1 kilobyte instead of 1.02
In this case, since we're dealing with a program file size, we'd always use the 1024 version to measure the size. File sizes, disk sizes, memory sizes, etc. all use the 1024 version. Although if we were dealing with network speeds, we'd measure it in terms of 1000, 1000000, etc. (another complication which is unnecessary but unfortunately we're stuck with for now).
Edit: Of course it's still up to Sonnyb, but if he doesn't say what he wants before April 1st, it'd make more sense to use the computer version of a kilobyte since that's what we're working with.
Okay, fine. You got me with this comment. Thanks for explaining it.
