I read an article on the Gangnam Style music video on the BBC website earlier this week and felt it failed to explain any of the numbers mentioned in any meaningful way.

The article asks,

How do you say 9,223,372,036,854,775,808?

Nine quintillion, two hundred and twenty-three quadrillion, three hundred and seventy-two trillion, thirty-six billion, eight hundred and fifty-four million, seven hundred and seventy-five thousand, eight hundred and eight.

When one starts to learn programming, understanding data types is of fundamental importance, irrespective whether you are using Native Languages like C or C++, Managed Languages like Java or C#, Functional Languages like Haskell or F# or Dynamic Languages like JavaScript, PHP or Python. A variable essentially is what a computer uses to store items usually when it is running. Text (like the one you are reading right now in this article) is usually stored in a String variable, whole numbers tend to be stored in an Int variable (integer).

There is no magic!

I program in C# (pronounced “see sharp”) a lot nowadays and can instantly recognise 2,147,483,647 as Int32.MaxValue. It is this limit that the Gangnam style video reached. Programming wise, Youtube is written in a lot of C, so a quick Wikipedia search for C data types shows that all that’s really changed is that they’ve changed their long signed integer type (At least in the −2147483647, +2147483647 range thus at least 32 bits in size) to a long long signed integer type (At least in the −9223372036854775807, +9223372036854775807 range thus at least 64 bits in size. Specified since the C99 version of the standard). In C#, this is Int64.MaxValue.