16 bit Int vs 32 bit Int vs 64 bit Int

Question

I\'ve been wondering this for a long time since I\'ve never had \"formal\" education on computer science (I\'m in highschool), so please excuse my ignorance on the subject.

Answer 1

To answer your first question, the usage of a 16 bit vs a 32 bit vs a 64 bit integer depends on the context that it is used. Therefore, you really can't say one is better over the other, per say. However, depending on a situation, using one over another is preferable. Consider this example. Let's say you have a database with 10 million users and you want to store the year they were born. If you create a field in your database with a 64 bit integer then you have exhausted 80 megabytes of your storage; whereas, if you were to use a 16 bit field, only 20 megabytes of your storage will get used. You can use a 16 bit field here because the year people are born is smaller than the largest 16 bit number. In other words 1980, 1990, 1991 < 65535, assuming your field is unsigned. All in all, it depends on the context. I hope this helps.