this post was submitted on 11 May 2025
856 points (97.3% liked)
Programmer Humor
23230 readers
1131 users here now
Welcome to Programmer Humor!
This is a place where you can post jokes, memes, humor, etc. related to programming!
For sharing awful code theres also Programming Horror.
Rules
- Keep content in english
- No advertisements
- Posts must be related to programming or programmer topics
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
I had a manager once tell me during a casual conversation with complete sincerity that one day with advancements in compression algorithms we could get any file down to a single bit. I really didn't know what to say to that level of absurdity. I just nodded.
Well he's not wrong. The decompression would be a problem though.
Yeah with lossy compression the future is today!
That's the kind of manager that also tells you that you just lack creativity and vision if you tell them that it's not possible. They also post regularly on LinkedIn
You can give me any file, and I can create a compression algorithm that reduces it to 1 bit. (*)
spoiler
(*) No guarantees about the size of the decompression algorithm or its efficacy on other filesu can have everthing in a single bit, if the decompressor includes the whole universe
Send him your work: 1 (or 0 ofc)
https://xkcd.com/1381/
That’s precisely when you bet on it.
Just make a file system that maps each file name to 2 files. The 0 file and the 1 file.
Now with just a filename and 1 bit, you can have any file! The file is just 1 bit. It's the filesystems that needs more than that.
It's an interesting question, though. How far CAN you compress? At some point you've extracted every information contained and increased the density to a maximum amount - but what is that density?
This is a really good question!
I believe the general answer is, until the compressed file is indistinguishable from randomness. At that point there is no more redundant information left to compress. Like you said, the 'information content' of a message can be measured.
(Note that there are ways to get a file to look like randomness that don't compress it)
I think by the time we reach some future extreme of data density, it will be in a method of storage beyond our current understanding. It will be measured in coordinates or atoms or fractions of a dimension that we nullify.
How to tell someone you don't know how compression algorithms work, without telling them directly.