I still have no idea how bit shifting and masking work. I don't have to use it in my day-to-day anymore but I briefly worked as a game developer and still occasionally do side gigs and personal game projects. When I was working on games as my day job I had to do a fair amount of masking for a bunch of different reasons. But I've never gotten the hang of it. Everytime I have to create a mask I have to Google it and then I'm like "oh yeah of course that's simple enough". But inevitably the next time I have to do it I end up back at square one.

@Demolishun I think a have an understanding of how it works but I get mixed up on what Anding vs oring does. It's such a small piece. It's worth mentioning I have a form of Dysgraphia which is kind of like dyslexia but for writing instead of reading. I don't have much of an issue anymore but I do feel I have a harder time with things that have to do with mathematical "order" I guess.

Like, seeing a math equation I can explain exactly what it's doing and why. But if I have to write it myself I just blank. Unless it's something I've had to do over and over.

Its just "set bit at pos n". For the value to be 1 both must match on & (all), either must be 1 for | (any).

^ is exclusive, so it's 1 if only one of the bit values has one (Highlander).

Shifts just offset n position l Or r. They can be lossy. They're good for quick math.

Well do you have to use it? I mostly do use it closer to metal, higher level abstractions usually have better ways to handle flags