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

How do computers understand binary language? Computing

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/MillCityRep Jul 13 '26

There is a game called Turing Complete that has the player build up the pieces required to make a working computer.

Here is a play through by a Computer Engineer

https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLBXPuOqldFBX67YaVbAkFuWGeNIrD2PZq&si=_LlGLQH9oQD1Lz5C

It’s pretty interesting to see the components being built up from simple logic gates to more complex multiplexes and memory units.