read04b.md

how is the computer work ?

The most basic way of thinking of a computer is as an Input/Output machine. That’s a pretty basic idea: computers take information from external sources (your keyboard, mouse, sensors or the internet), store it, process it, and return the result (Output) of that process.

Now, we are all pretty used and familiar with the ways a computer has to receive input and to print out some output, we’ve all used a mouse or a keyboard, or even talked to a computer and we’ve all read an article on a website, listened to music or browsed through some old pictures, etc. What we ain’t as familiar with, and what we usually struggle to understand is how a computer actually processes information.

So yes, on a very fundamental level all a computer understands is 1’s and 0’s which means that every single input and output gets at some point translated into or from 1’s and 0s. What is powerful about 1’s and 0’s (also called bits -from BInary digiT) is that it allows us to transform any information into electrical signals (ON/OFF). Please take a moment to think about it: ANYTHING you see, think or interact with can actually be translated and represented as electrical signals(!!!). Representing information as electrical signals is what allows computers to actually process that information and transform it.