"Life, Nerd, and True: 13. The true meaning of 42  In The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, the  supercomputer Deep Thought is built by a race of  hyper-intelligent alien beings to determine the  answer to ""life, the universe, and everything  Deep Thought determines that the answer is,  somewhat anticlimactically, ""42."" It sounds like a  joke, but is there more to this answer? Douglas  Adams was an unabashed computer nerd and  knew a heck of a lot about programming  language and coding. In programming, an  asterisk is commonly used to translate  as""whatever you want it to be"". In ASCII  language, the most basic computer software,  ""42"" is the designation for an asterisk. A  computer, Deep Thought, was asked what the  true meaning of life was. It answered as a  computer would. 42-""anything you want it to  be."" Genius awesomacious:  Anything you want it to be…"
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