Recently I came across a code that can compute the largest number given two numbers using XOR. While this looks nifty, the same thing can be achieved by a simple ternary operator or an if else. Not pertaining to just this example, but do bitwise operations have any advantage over normal code? If so, is this advantage in speed of computation or memory usage? I am assuming in bitwise operations the assembly code will look much simpler than normal code. On a related note, while programming embedded systems which is more efficient?
*Normal code refers to how you'd normally do it. For example a*2 is normal code and I can achieve the same thing with a<<1