I understand the concept of coding, that it’s a bunch of if/then/unless kind of hardwired decisions. But where, PHYSICALLY, and how does this happen? This one I need actually explained like I’m five. I’ve never understood how code physically implements itself into fruition.
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A transistor is a special type of electrical circuit. In a normal circuit, electricity can flow through it when it’s in the “on” position, and can’t flow through when it’s in the “off” position. A light switch is a circuit like this.
A transistor operates the same way, except there’s an extra wire leading to it. There are two sources of electricity going to the transistor. Both of them have to be “on” for electricity to come out the other end. Instead of you manually flicking the lights switch to “on”, the electricity from the second wire does.
So in a computer, they have all these transistors arranged together in a giant pattern. It’s set up like a million dominoes, each one ready to activate the next. But imagine that this set of dominoes has switches, like a train on a track (in fact, the dominoes themselves are basically the switches). And depending on which switches are flipped, Domino #1 can knock down either Domino #2 or Domino #3. So you know ahead of time, when you set up this complicated pattern, which switches need to be flipped to get certain answers.
Computer code gives directions on which switches to flip. Then when electricity passes through, the right dominoes all fall over, and depending on which path they take, that gives you your answer. Then they instantly reset (because it’s not actual physical dominoes, it’s just an electrical pulse running a giant maze).
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