I was about to post that in my opinion base-12 is superior to base-10. But someone beat me to it. In a six-fi novel I'm writing, an advanced alien civilisation uses base-12.
As to your question specifically regarding base-16 instead of base-12, it depends.
Decimal itself is just a bizarre choice, most likely due to humans having literally ten digits. In decimal we can represent exact fractions of 1/2, 1/5, and 1/10 (without repeated decimals like 0.33333 for 1/3). Counting by fives (and twos) is very easy.
But choosing prime factors of 2 and 5 is a strange choice in itself. Why skip 3? Why is it more useful to easily represent fraction 1/5th as 0.2 instead of 1/3rd? How often do we use fifths?
Hexadecimal in one sense is easier, all prime factors are two. So we can represent 1/2, 1/4, 1/8, and 1/16 exactly.
Duodecimal (Base 12) is very convenient for having a high proportion of exact fractions. Eg - 1/12, 1/6, 1/4, 1/3, and 1/2 can all be represented exactly. I'd argue in everyday use we're more likely to consider 1/3rd of something than 1/5th. Counting by twos, threes, fours, and sixes is easy. Watch, let's count to 20 (24 in decimal) by 3's : 3, 6, 9, 10, 13, 16, 19, 20. In 4's : 4, 8, 10, 14, 18, 20. By 6 : 6, 10, 16, 20.
Base-12 offers four handy subdivisions (excluding 1) instead of two for decimal or three for hexadecimal. That beats hexadecimal using fewer unique digits. It beats decimal by two using only two extra unique digits.
And I think it's these reasons it was chosen for various historical subdivisional units (inches per foot, pence per shilling).
The other item to consider is the relative number of unique values per digit. I'm not sure of the utility of having 10, 12, or 16 here.
At one extreme, while binary is useful for discretising signals in digital logic, using only zeroes and ones becomes cumbersome for daily use at higher numbers.
Once we're at base 10 and higher, I'm not sure how much here extra digits help or hurt.
Make them use base-23 and somehow this will allow them find the secrets of the universe because the question to life, the universe and everything can be solved easily with base-23 math.
As to your question specifically regarding base-16 instead of base-12, it depends.
Decimal itself is just a bizarre choice, most likely due to humans having literally ten digits. In decimal we can represent exact fractions of 1/2, 1/5, and 1/10 (without repeated decimals like 0.33333 for 1/3). Counting by fives (and twos) is very easy.
But choosing prime factors of 2 and 5 is a strange choice in itself. Why skip 3? Why is it more useful to easily represent fraction 1/5th as 0.2 instead of 1/3rd? How often do we use fifths?
Hexadecimal in one sense is easier, all prime factors are two. So we can represent 1/2, 1/4, 1/8, and 1/16 exactly.
Duodecimal (Base 12) is very convenient for having a high proportion of exact fractions. Eg - 1/12, 1/6, 1/4, 1/3, and 1/2 can all be represented exactly. I'd argue in everyday use we're more likely to consider 1/3rd of something than 1/5th. Counting by twos, threes, fours, and sixes is easy. Watch, let's count to 20 (24 in decimal) by 3's : 3, 6, 9, 10, 13, 16, 19, 20. In 4's : 4, 8, 10, 14, 18, 20. By 6 : 6, 10, 16, 20.
Base-12 offers four handy subdivisions (excluding 1) instead of two for decimal or three for hexadecimal. That beats hexadecimal using fewer unique digits. It beats decimal by two using only two extra unique digits.
And I think it's these reasons it was chosen for various historical subdivisional units (inches per foot, pence per shilling).
The other item to consider is the relative number of unique values per digit. I'm not sure of the utility of having 10, 12, or 16 here.
At one extreme, while binary is useful for discretising signals in digital logic, using only zeroes and ones becomes cumbersome for daily use at higher numbers.
Once we're at base 10 and higher, I'm not sure how much here extra digits help or hurt.