As a mathematician I agree that it's useful to verbalize a hex constant, regardless of silly, best-practice kind of objections. Here's something I remembered reading last year: http://evincarofautumn.blogspot.com/2011/09/how-to-pronounce-hexadecimal-numbers.html[^]

I'm almost 36. These days I can find a new job without much difficulty. But it wasn't always that easy. School had always been a frustrating prison. Nobody really helped a lot; they just wanted me to tough it out. I grew up in small towns and my only access to computers was at school. During study hall in junior high I would beg to use the Apple IIs in the computer lab. Most of the time it didn't happen and other times much of the period was wasted before I could even get permission from the librarian. My local library had a book of BASIC games. I spent a lot time reading the programs and understanding them from the printed page. I also started writing my own programs in a notebook. Later in high school, I printed out all the QuickBASIC sample games on a dot matrix printer and read those listings at home. I got excited about taking the programming courses available in high school. Despite being an advanced mathematics student and winning at several mathematics competitions, I was not allowed to take programming as a freshman. The best I could do was get special permission from one of the teachers/administrators. My friend and I were able to use the computers for a brief time in the mornings and up to about an hour after school when she left for home. When it came time to enroll in Computer Programming as a sophomore they tried to say that Algebra II was a prerequisite and I'd have to wait another year. But I refused to wait any longer and they decided that it would be ok to take it concurrently. As a senior I didn't know what to do next. Because I was burned out on school and tired of being slowed down, I ended up going to a tech school for a computer electronics associate degree. The recruiter was able to capture my imagination by selling me a lie. Sure we did a small bit of BASIC and Motorola assembly, but he allowed me to fantasize about tearing into the internals of MS-DOS 6. I wish my parents had helped guide me better; I wasted money and about two years of my life. Avoid tech schools. I was desperate to go to college where the real learning takes place. But even there I was frustrated by the pace and I was surprised that the students didn't care more now that the education was no longer free. The thought of waiting several more years was a downer and I didn't always picture myself making it to graduation. The Dean of Mathematics let me and a friend into his Modern Algebra classes. People like him tried to help, but mostly they just followed the system. We took a couple of teams to the AC