How many bits are in an `int` in C? What do you mean "at least 16", that's ridiculous, nobody would write a language that leaves the number of bits in basic elementary types partially specified‽
It is a good idea - most of the time you don't care, and on slower systems a large int is harmful since the system can't handle that much and it cost performance - go to the faster system with larger ints when you need larger intw.