Programmer’s Day in Russia: why September 13 and what is the number 256
Today Russia celebrates Programmer’s Day. The date was not chosen by chance: the holiday falls on the 256th day of the year. This is the number of different values that can be expressed with an eight-bit byte (2 to the eighth power). In a non-leap year the celebration falls on September 13, and in a leap year — on September 12.
256 is the highest power of two that does not exceed the number of days in a year (365 or 366). For people involved in programming, this number has special meaning, as a byte is the fundamental unit of information measurement in computing.
The idea of celebrating “Programmer’s Day” appeared back in 1996. Dmitry Mendrelyuk, head of the publishing house “Computerra”, proposed on the Fidonet network to consider the first Friday of September as a holiday and call it “Clean Friday”. However, after discussions, most participants chose the 256th day of the year for unofficial celebration.
In 2002, employees of the web studio “Parallel Technologies,” Valentin Balt and Mikhail Chervyakov, organized a petition to the Russian government to make the 256th day of the year an official holiday for programmers.
Programmer’s Day received official status on September 11, 2009. Russian President Dmitry Medvedev signed Decree No. 1034, prepared by the Ministry of Communications and Mass Media of the Russian Federation. Thus, the holiday became professional for everyone involved in software development.
It is worth noting that there are other dates related to programming around the world. For example, December 10 is celebrated as the birthday of Ada Lovelace, who is considered the first programmer in history. November 30 is International Computer Security Day, and April 4 is a possible date for web programmers, as the number 404 is associated with the ‘page not found’ error.
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Primary source: ru.wikipedia.org ↗