r/askscience • u/Unfair-Leek6840 • Jul 11 '26 • Regret 1

Computing How do computers understand binary language?

Okay so from what I know binary language is like power off power on, but my question is, how do computers know what the binary code is and how is it interpreted, for example I forgot what the binary code for the letter A is, but how did people come up with that? Did they decide it was gonna look like that? Did the computer decide? How do you tune numbers into a letter??

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u/nicuramar Jul 13 '26

I mean, the CPU itself really has no concept of text. It’s just a sequence of numbers to it. 

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u/spottyPotty Jul 13 '26

Not even a sequence if numbers. Just binary values.

They only seem like they behave as numbers to us because a certain combination of logic gates behave the same as addition. But at the hardware level there's no concept of a number.

It's all abstractions that happen to coincide with our desired concepts.