How do you define “if” for computers?

Question

I’m not a programmer, how do you get from binary 1s and 0s to “if x occurs complete y” How do you tell the computer to wait for a future input?

In: 2

Answer 1

There are generally two strategies:

1. It checks the condition periodically to see if it has occurred.
2. The condition interrupts whatever the computer is doing at the time, and the computer then triggers the follow-up action.