Talk:Nibble

message: I seem to recall a BASIC programming magazine named Nibble that listed lines of BASIC code that readers could copy into their machines and run games or programs.  Each game or program was broken down over multiple months of publications, so it was imperative that if you wanted to finish programming your game, you'd better get the next month's copy.  Does anybody else have any information on this? Framerotblues 20:51, 15 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Programming magazine? 

message: Do we not know the name of the "person who coined the term for computer use"? 209.92.136.131 18:27, 21 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Attribution 

message: Please add something about which half of a byte is low and which is high.
:I wish that were possible! As it is, which is which depends on whether the system is "BigEndian" or "LittleEndian" --AlisonW 16:14, 4 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Low/High 

message: I've never heard of the term "hexit" before. A quick glance through the "hexadecimal" page doesn't mention the term. A Google search for "hexit" returns 31900 results, and none of the results on the first page led to any use of the term "hexit" to mean "hexadecimal digit". Is "hexit" a term in common use?  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Rainault (talk • contribs) 20:20, 8 September 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Hexit? 

message: A tidbit about tidbits.
 
I was part of the team that developed the Bally Astrocade game system in the 1976-1977 time frame. It used 2 bit per pixel graphics. We always referred to a 2 bit wide bit string as a "tidbit".  Jeff Fredericksen, our lead hardware engineer, came up with that name. Nibble was already in common use then, and we always spelled it without the "Y".
Jamiefaye (talk) 23:30, 2 October 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Tidbit 

message: It's nybble not nibble anyone who actually knows anything about computing could tell you that. It never seems to bother any wikipaedo that they're just doing the wrong thing again and again. Sad.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 46.7.124.12 (talk) 15:25, 18 March 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks for your opinion, but "nibble" is correct. Of course it's not really an established word, so variations in spelling are to be expected. Johnuniq (talk) 01:00, 19 March 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Once again Wikipedia gets it wrong 

message: I was probably the first to use nibble as the unit of storage required to hold a BCD decimal digit.  This was in 1957 or 1958 while talking with my mother, an early programmer at Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory (now Los Alamos National Laboratory).  It was in the living room of our house when the term popped in my head.  "Nibble?" she said.  "Yes," I replied "a nibble is half a byte isn't it?"  She appreciated the play on words and almost certainly passed it along to her T-4 colleagues.  There were precious few programmers in those days and I'm sure the term was quickly passed around.
I knew about the term byte because I had been informed about the forthcoming STRETCH computer which had a (rather complex) notion of byte but that ordinarily an 8 bit unit was meant.  Note that the design of STRETCH was carried out in close consultation to the prospective user community at Los Alamos.
David B. Benson (talk) 22:57, 27 July 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  First use of nibble with this meaning 

message: Two of my students have told me they inserted the statement about nibblet (being half a nibble) to prove a point to a colleague a few years ago, and I believe it should be removed
DoctorMikeReddy (talk) 10:10, 16 April 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: Now I'm curious about what point they were trying to prove. Do you remember? Felice Enellen (talk) 08:24, 4 November 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  Use of nibblet 

message: I've been writing code since the early 80's, and I've worked in companies as small as 25 people and as large as 100,000 people. I have never in my life encountered someone who actually wrote code for a living and spelled it with an "i". This page's assertion that it's only "sometimes" spelled "nybble" is inaccurate. It's "nybble", to match "byte", and it always has been. Anyone spelling it otherwise is in the same category as those who pronounce "nuclear" as "noo-kyoo-lur", or "ask" as "axe", i.e. those who have picked up the term lazily and never bothered to look at it or its history closely.
As all of the others say, this needs to be moved to Nybble. Felice Enellen (talk) 23:35, 30 July 2019 (UTC)
replies: text: There is no such word as "nibble" or "nybble" despite whatever might be found in we-have-more-entries-than-you-do dictionaries. It's in-house jokey jargon that is nowhere near the status of "byte" which is a word widely recognized, with varying degrees of accuracy, by non-specialists. Scanning this page shows that the i/y issue depends entirely on the circumstances in which someone is introduced to the term. Some people on this page swear it is i while others believe in  y. Some reliable sources might throw light on the issue and swapping opinions is not very helpful. Johnuniq (talk) 23:47, 30 July 2019 (UTC)
replies: text: Are you a professional software engineer? I've spent decades at it. Your "jokey jargon" assertion may have been true 40-50 years ago, but is wide of the mark at this point in time. The term "nybble" is used between professionals, in technical reference manuals, in college textbooks, and in journals. It is absolutely "a word". As for sources, I'm already out collecting them, but if you'd like a quick one in the interim, just click the already-existing external link at the bottom of the article and search for "nybble" in the linked 1981 article. Felice Enellen (talk) 00:12, 31 July 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Nibble" is not the most common spelling 

message: Hey, dont you think nibbles should be a little bit smaller? The people who invented nibbles should have made them a little smaller due to 1/2 of a bite being bigger than a nibble and still a nibble. Bit=byte that was invented in the past lol just kidding2600:1009:B124:DB6E:4CA:714A:ED0C:55C0 (talk) 00:32, 1 February 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  too big of a byte 

message: I really don't see a point in having a table of nibbles. It doesn't really demonstrate anything of value, and it just seems to serve no purpose. For comparison, there isn't a table of bits on the page for bits, nor is there a table of bytes on the page of bytes. Same could be said for the examples.
If anything, this table should be moved to the page on hexadecimal. I will be removing the table from the article for the time being, but feel free to reverse it if you see fit.
Money-lover-12345 (discuss • contribs) 04:54, 2 February 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Table of nibbles