Binary 

Computers have different programming languages, you may have heard of some of them such as C, HTML, Python or Scratch.

Regardless of what language you program in they all convert to binary when running through the computer. This is because computer processors only work at base level as “on” or “off”.

They are a digital machine and only have zero or one (off or on) as a state to calculate. Every computer, regardless of its age or specification works on binary at its core. You need to understand that binary is like a counting system that can tell a computer what to do.

All a programming language does is make the binary system easier to understand and use by acting as an interpreter between plain human speak and computer speak. It is theoretically possible to program a computer using binary only, but this would be an enormous task and it is much more efficient using a programming language instead. These languages have dictionaries of commands, syntax and terminology preloaded for you to use.

Computers also use binary to store and send data. This is because they are electronic and turn electricity on (one) or off (zero) to represent the data. Sometimes the terms high and low are used to represent on and off. There are other ways to store the ones and zeros that a computer reads, but we won’t go into that here. To learn more, search the internet for “data storage”.

Each digit is called a bit. This will be a 1 or 0.

Computers store bits in blocks of 8. Each block of eight bits is called a byte.

Normally people count in base ten. In binary we count in base two.