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Soften your opinions and turn them into questions. Instead of “clearly a byte has 9 bits! It’s max value is 2^9!” Ask more innocently: “I could be wrong, but isn’t a byte 9 bits? And if that’s the case, then wouldn’t the max value it could store be 2^9? Please correct me where I’m misunderstanding, I literally just took CS 101...”

(Also publicly admit you’re wrong a lot when you do assert something that you later learn is wrong. If you have a spirit of always learning, mistakes are ongoing part of the process and life is boring otherwise. )




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