Art of Assembly Language, 1st Edition

2.3. 2.3 The Hexadecimal Numbering System

A big problem with the binary system is verbosity. To represent the value 202₁₀ requires eight binary digits. The decimal version requires only three decimal digits and, thus, represents numbers much more compactly than does the binary numbering system. This fact is not lost on the engineers who design binary computer systems. When dealing with large values, binary numbers quickly become too unwieldy. Unfortunately, the computer thinks in binary, so most of the time it is convenient to use the binary numbering system. Although we can convert between decimal and binary, the conversion is not a trivial task. The hexadecimal (base 16) numbering system solves many of the problems inherent in the binary system. ...