A little known(and little documented) class in the framework is the System.Collections.Specialized.BitVector32 . It allows working easily with 32 bit integers, which are used extensively in optimized environments as a way to quickly pass data around.

I had in application in VB6 once that had to talk to a COM server written in C++. The server would send and recieve statuses and messages using only 32 bit constructs. Luckily, I had a cool class that helped me work with it easily(I never was much of a bits and bytes guy), but this was in VB6. It's good to know that BitVector32 exists, and now, John R. Lewis has written a short and to the point article which explains how he used it to parse data in a real application. Great contribution! I just *know* that that article will save me a few headaches in the future.

[ISerializable]