Well, when working with 3-bit values, then Octal is used. In some early systems with 6-bit 'bytes', octal was used a lot.
But fairly rapidly, 8-bits was chosen for the base unit, as it matches better with binary, as 8 is a power of two. And Hex fits 8-bit values like a glove: 2 hex digits match 8 binary digits.
00 00000000
01 00000001
08 00001000
0f 00001111
ff 11111111
Today, we use 32 or 46 bit 'Words', and these match perfectly with hex digits. Octal would just be a mess, so it has largely passed into history, waiting to catch any unwary new C programmers who use leading zeros.
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