Talk:byte

Etymology

Wikipedia says it was coined in 1957 by Werner Buchholz during the early design phase for the IBM Stretch computer, but doesn't provide a reference.

Earliest patent on Google patent search was filed in 1959:

• Patent number: 3,079,597
• BYTE CONVERTER
• Filing date: Jan 2, 1959
• "From the foregoing discussion, it will be seen that the word "byte" is herein used to define bit-groups made up of selected numbers of bits."

Omegatron 00:15, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

The guy in this archive recording says it comes from or means "by eight": https://youtu.be/vpZEtc8VQkU?t=4m38s. Is that something that oughta be looked into?

76.187.92.196 13:54, 16 June 2024 (UTC)

Order of senses and nesting

I propose to put the most common sense as first (8-bit unit), and the more arcane sense ("smallest unit of addressable memory" in AHD terms) as second, losing the sense nesting. Pinging @Equinox who introduced the nesting just recently. In “byte”, in OneLook Dictionary Search., M-W does not have the arcane sense at all while AHD[1] has it as a 2nd sense; I propose to follow the AHD model. My problem is that now it looks as though the arcane sense is a primary sense, and the nesting gives the impression that the main sense is less important since it appears subordinate. --Dan Polansky (talk) 08:10, 22 February 2020 (UTC)

I think I made the edit in response to 2a01:e35:39b3:3fa0:91a6:7596:5dff:7f6b, who seemed to be overcomplicating the entry. I don't care that much about the specific ordering. I would just say that (i) the 8-bit byte is massively predominant, and probably what a casual reader wants to know, and (ii) we should however indicate that a byte is not always 8 bits. Equinox ◑ 05:51, 25 February 2020 (UTC)

The current structure is logical insofar as 8-bit byte is a hyponym of any-bit byte. Having two totally separate senses is (to me) undesirable because if one sense can comprehend the other then really we are dealing with a subsense. One approach might be to gloss the subsense as "(most commonly)" or similar. We could also make it a single sense line: "a blah blah blah, ESPECIALLY one of 8 bits". Equinox ◑ 05:55, 25 February 2020 (UTC)

@Equinox I am not convinced the relationship is hyponymy, because of the genera of the senses: the one sense has "unit of data" (AHD) as the genus, while the other sense has "a set of bits" (AHD) or "sequnce of bits" (wikt) as a sequence of particular slots. Like, an apartment in an appartment building can have a certain volume, but one should not confuse apartments with volumes. And even if we accept the hyponymy hypothesis, I am not convinced hyponymy should always be indicated via sense nesting; I find it preferable to put the most common sense first, like 1) A; 2) More broadly, B. (Sorry for the late response.) --Dan Polansky (talk) 09:22, 29 February 2020 (UTC)

Bytes generally have to be aligned machine-wise. If we have a two-byte word like 0000111100001111, it's IMO a bit dubious whether 11110000 is a "byte" within that word, even though standing alone it would be. What do others think? Equinox ◑ 13:58, 29 February 2020 (UTC)

Czech bajt vs. byte

See Talk:bajt#Czech bajt vs. byte. --Dan Polansky (talk) 09:01, 22 February 2020 (UTC)