Programming code tells the computer to do something, but what makes the code actually mean anything to the computer?

Question

Programming code tells the computer to do something, but what makes the code actually mean anything to the computer?

In: Engineering

Answer 1

The computer, unfortunately, speaks only the electric language so to communicate with it, programmers needs a way to translate what they write (0 and 1) to electric current, which thank God is ready set up in the computer.

Since nobody likes to write a precise 1000 or more serie of 0 and 1 (swapping a 0 to a 1 completely changing the instruction the computer hears), we use what’s called “higher level programming language”. Those languages accept text (or even emoji sometimes, if you make aliases) and they range for simple instructions like “Put 5 in that space of memory” (in what’s called ASeMbly language) to complicated stuff like “sort that list”.

If you take the C++ language for instance, you write in English and in Math and then the computer runs the text you wrote to a program, the compilater, which will translate it into Assembly language, which will then be translated to 1 and 0 which will be then translated to electric current

Programming languages are always being translated to lower and lower levels until the machine can finally understand it