Is direct bit manipulation a common industry practice?
Today, you don't see bitwise operations used very often. This is because:
- Memory and CPU resources available in today's hardware make micro-optimizations with bitwise operators redundant most of the time.
Bitwise operations aren't usually on top of an average developer's mind, which makes reading code written by others (or by yourself a month ago) harder.
That said, in some domains, bitwise operators are still in common use. These include image editing, motion graphics, data compression and encryption, device drivers, and embedded programming.
Bitwise operators can be used to create, manipulate, and read sequences of binary flags, helping save memory compared to collections of booleans. This means you sometimes see them used in error reporting and access control scenarios. For example, here's a case study describing how a combination of Bitwise OR and Bitwise AND helped check access privileges in a content management system.
Aside from these applications, you won't see bitwise operators used much. You should think twice before using them yourself unless you're sure they can bring added value in terms of improving performance or reducing complexity.
