ASCII

ASCII (American Standard Code for Information Interchange) is a character encoding standard that represents text in computers and communication equipment. It uses 7-bit binary numbers to encode 128 characters, including English letters, digits, punctuation marks, and control codes. ASCII was developed in the 1960s and serves as a foundational encoding system for text-based data interchange.

Also known as: Ascii, US-ASCII, ANSI X3.4, ASCII Encoding, American Standard Code

Why learn ASCII?

Developers should learn ASCII to understand how text is represented at the binary level, which is essential for low-level programming, data parsing, and debugging encoding issues. It is particularly useful in scenarios involving legacy systems, network protocols, or when working with raw data streams where character encoding must be explicitly handled.

Learning Resources

• docs: ASCII - Wikipedia
• docs: ASCII Table and Description
• tutorial: ASCII Encoding Tutorial by TutorialsPoint
• video: Character Encoding and ASCII Explained - YouTube Video