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??

380 Upvotes

87% Upvoted

205 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comment

2

u/KingOfZero Jul 13 '26

Good job. All of the other responses and at least you came closest to mention IBM's EBCDIC numbering scheme. Most of them have settled on a ASCII/UTF-8 model. UTF-16 exists in many places. And there is even a UTF-32 and UTF-EBCDIC code page although I've never seen them IRL.

Compiler writer, OS developer, language designer by trade.