After this "wonderful" innovation, VB .NET has come around full circle and stores data in a way that is similar to the way it was in the earliest versions of VB: binary, floating point, integer, and so forth. Wellllllll .... give 'em credit for finally figuring it out and now doing it (IMHO) the "right" way.

True = -1 = 1111 1111 1111 1111
False = 0 = 0000 0000 0000 0000 

The reason the binary equivalents are like this is that computers use something called "two's complement" to represent negative numbers. In fact, virtually every computer actually stores binary numbers using two's complement because the computer circuitry can handle arithmetic this way a lot faster.

First, a basic description of the method. Let's use our example number, 7382 (decimal). Earlier, we converted this to 1110011010110 (binary). It's important to start using the full 16 bit binary number when doing two's complement arithmetic.

To get the two's complement of this value, -7382, write out the number in binary. Then invert the digits and add one to the result. For out example:

Then invert the digits. 0 becomes 1, 1 becomes 0.

Then we add 1.

1110001100101001
               1
1110001100101010

Notice that the two's complement of the number can simply be added to another number to get the right answer (throwing away the high order 1 that is carried during the addition):

 9876 = 0010011010010100
-7382 = 1110001100101010
-----   ----------------
 2494 = 0000100110111110

To come "full circle" on the topic of two's complement, consider the two's complement of the number -1 (decimal).

the number        0000000000000001
invert the digits 1111111111111110
add 1             1111111111111111

So, -1 is 1111111111111111 in two's complement.