International Programmers’ Day: 13th September, 256th Day of The Year

In this article, we will be celebrating International Programmers Day by discussing the history and background of the day.

International Programmers Day or The Day of the Programmer is a celebration and a time to honour programmers and innovators who have enhanced our lives in the form of innovation, program design, and creation. The celebration is even based on binary code and is celebrated on the 256th day of the year.

256 is a very special number in the world of computing.

The day is represented by an eight-bit byte 256 which equals 2 to the eighth power, which makes it the highest power of two which is less than 365.

When translated to binary code, the day reads 1 0000 0000.

The concept of Programmers day was formed in Russia in 2002, by programmers Valentin Balt and Michael Cherviakov from the organization Parallel Technologies, its purpose was to recognize and celebrate the efforts of programmers on a global scale.

At the time the pair approached their government with signatures of support in order to make the day official however, it was rejected several times. On July 24th, 2009 the new professional holiday was introduced by the Ministry of Communications and Mass Media by executive draft, and finally, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev signed the decree on 11th September 2009.

International Programmers Day is celebrated by the majority on the 12th of September; however, it is celebrated on the 24th of October in China, they also have their own technologically based reasoning for this specific date. This is because it can be written as “1024” which is equal to 210, and in real life, 1024 is usually treated as 1000, as an interface between binary codes and the decimal world.

In previous blogs we have discussed the technological benefits of todays world and we must achknowlede that programming is behind all that technology. Individuals benefit from programming in education, security, websites, smart devices, Apps, finance, shopping, transportation, medicine, and so many more. Let’s see what the future of programming will bring.