 So yesterday I posted my first video in my C series and somebody asked a question that I've gotten before which is why do we return ones and zeros and why if it's successful is it zero wouldn't one be successful and I can see how this can be confusing you know wrapping your head around it you might think one is successful zero is nothing it's failed well it's actually the opposite way around where zero means that it was successful why is this because because this is an X code it's an error code it's going to tell you what went wrong and if nothing went wrong we're at zero we start off at zero so were there any errors no zero we're all good we also have to remember that when it comes to binary we think of binary is ones and zeros zeros and ones which really isn't true it's just two states it can be anything on on your hard drive you don't actually have ones and zeros we just use ones and zeros to represent them if it's you know it's a magnetic hard drive it's going to be whether it's a polarized one way or another CDs it's shooting a laser into the disk whether that laser comes back or doesn't represent either ones or zeros on's or off's you know with old punch cards programming it's you either have a hole or you don't it's ones or zeros on's or off's those are all the same things they're not actually ones and zeros it's just one way to represent them and when we're exiting out of a program or a function if we return zero it means success why is that well because zero means false why we return a false if things are good where we're saying are there any errors no there aren't zero false one is generally means it's a general error code there something failed there are other codes you can use in different languages for different things even negative numbers in some cases I believe that may give you a more specific you know code on what went wrong but zero means that there were no errors everything was successful if anything else is returned well then it was false so that's the main reason you know I'm hoping that helps you think about it there's different ways you can look at it but basically were there any problems no zero everything's good anything other than zero something happened that shouldn't have happened so that is why we return zeros as success and I know that you would think zero is bad and you know again zero you're looking at it's like oh it's false why are we getting a false if things were successful it's because false on problems is one way to look at it anyway I hope that makes helps you think through it if you have a better way of explain it let me know in the comments below thanks for watching visit filmsbychrist.com that's Chris at the can I hope that you have a great day