We knew that you could use Python to convert between decimal, hexadecimal, and binary. But we failed to make the leap to using it for troubleshooting bit-wise operations.

Let's take the example further, and convert each hexadecimal digit to its decimal equivalent and then add them: (16 2 x 1) + (16 0 x 15) + (16 0 x 4) = (256 + 240 + 4) = 500. Hex and binary in action.

Python makes a pretty nice interactive calculator. You can do the other way around, too, with the builtin function bin(x). (And there are also hex() and oct() builtins, if you also need to go back ...