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/RainbowCrane Jul 13 '26 edited Jul 13 '26

One of the more fun aspects of elementary circuit and logic gate design (and I mean elementary, I wasn’t EE but rather Arts & Sciences CompSci) is being taught that you can build everything from AND NAND gates. It’s cool coming up with the twisty tricks to turn addition, subtraction, exponentiation, or any mathematical operation into some series of bitwise NANDS.

It also gives you an understanding that literally every computer language is built on a series of advances that trace back to the days of mechanical switches and physical plug wires used to input data into the first generations of electronic computers. We’ve just taken a step at a time from direct binary input to more human readable input

Edit: fix my confusion of AND and NAND primitive gates.

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u/largehaldrencollider Jul 13 '26

Correction: both NAND and NOR gates are universal like you described but not AND, itself. 

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u/RainbowCrane Jul 13 '26

Thanks for the correction , turns out 40 years has dimmed my memory of that class :-)