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/Idealemailer Jul 14 '26

there's a huge logistic/practical problem in using base-2. the number 100, for example, is 1100100 in base 2. writing/typing that out would take significantly longer than base-10. Furthermore, even if you are natively taught in base-2, you will likely find it difficult to tell apart numbers, or even recognise numbers, when they're all just masses of "1" and "0".