Bit bashing
(Also "bit diddling" or
bit twiddling).
Any of several kinds of low-level programming characterised by manipulation of
bit,
flag,
nibble, and other smaller-than-character-sized pieces of data.
These include low-level device control, encryption algorithms, checksum and error-correcting codes, hash functions, some flavours of graphics programming (see
bitblt), and assembler/compiler code generation.
May connote either tedium or a real technical challenge (more usually the former).
"The command decoding for the new tape driver looks pretty solid but the bit-bashing for the control registers still has bugs."
See also
bit bang,
mode bit.
