I’m not very technical so apologies if I use terms interchangeably that don’t make sense but I will try to explain. What I understand and put very basic is: we write code, it then gets “converted” so that the computer understands it. This is represented by 1’s and 0’s that trigger current in the hardware that gets stored in memory, lights a LED, etc. through (I think it’s called) logic gates.
That’s my way of understanding it. What I don’t understand is how the current is triggered? What causes that interaction?
For example, when I click save in a document. How does that trigger it to be saved in the hardware. Is it that, when I physically click on my mouse. That physical interaction of clicking sends a current and the computer recognises that the proportion of the pixels on the screen represents saving the document, which then triggers it to send that current to the logic gates?
Edit: Thank you for all your answers.
In: Technology
Is it your hand which grasps, or is it your fingers doing all the work? Is is software which puts those icons on your screen, or is it currents?
The thing to understand about the computer is that it’s *all* just electrical currents. All the logical, visual stuff you see represented on the screen and in the computer’s abstractions ilke “icon” and “desktop”, all of those things are just different arrangements of currents flowing through that big array of logic gates. So to ask how clicking the icon ‘triggers’ a current, well, it’s just currents triggering other currents.
That’s really what a logic gate is, is a voltage trigger. There are various logic gates such as “and” gates and “or” gates, and their job is to trigger in a certain if-then scenario. It performs a rule like “If input voltage A is high *or* input voltage B is high, *then* set output voltage C to high.” The job of a CPU maker, is to wire these gates up to each other in ways so that physical if-then scenarios concerning the voltages on the wires between them, will map cleanly onto *logical* if-then scenarios that are useful for computation, such as the ‘carry rule’ for binary addition: “if both addends have a 1, then carry a 1 over to the next digit.”
The software in the computer can be looked at in two different ways. Looked at in one way, the meaning of a particular software instruction could be: Store the value “hello” in a string starting at memory location 15.
But looked at in another way, the meaning of that instruction is: “Set the following voltages on the RAM data bus: high low low high high […] high high”.
It’s kind of like the difference between saying “write ‘hello’ on this piece of paper” and “deposit ink on the paper in the following shapes.” The same physical thing is going on, but you’re describing it at a different level of meaning. That’s the difference between “saving a file” and “triggering currents.”
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