About Base Conversion
Number bases (or radixes) represent values using different digit sets. Decimal uses 10 digits (0-9), binary uses 2 (0-1), hexadecimal uses 16 (0-9, A-F), and octal uses 8 (0-7).
Programmers use hex for compact binary representation (each hex digit maps to exactly 4 bits), octal for Unix file permissions, and binary for understanding bitwise operations.