Computers have come a long way from the traditional versions that are the size of a house. These could only be instructed by people putting cards with holes punched in them into a special scanner. Now, you can activate an app by the press of a button or touch of a finger. Your PC or laptop is most likely to have special features such as voice-recognition technology, like Cortana, speakers, cameras and many ways to communicate with the outside world.
Beneath all that clever coding, the idea stays the same: computers are machines that solve problems by making vast numbers of mathematical calculations. To a computer, everything is a number. A picture? Number. A sound? Number. A word? Number.
A computers ‘brain’ is called the central prosseccing unit (CPU). This microchip consists of many millions of tiny electronic comductors and components, aranged in ways that allow them to calculate faily simple maths but at high speed. The chip races through billions of sums per second. That’s even more than your maths teacher can do!
The CPU has three main jobs: reading and writing the computer’s memory, carrying out calculations and tasks and sending and recieving messages from other devices.
Together, these parts and many other optional extras are known as the computer’s hardware. They are connected together on a motherboard, which is a complicated circuit which applies power to the whole system.
The instructions that tell the hardware what to do is called an Operating System, or OS for short. Some of these include Microsoft Windows, Manjuro Linux and macOS.
Most OS’s are written in C++. Don’t think it is as easy as Scratch though; it is low level, meaning you have to know a lot about the computer you’re working with. Without this, the program will go terribly wrong.
Other coding languages include Java, Python, C and PHP. All of these are different in many ways. For example, Java is syntactically similar to C, but programs are compiled to byte code which run on a virtual machine program. This means Java programs can run on many different types of computers.
Basically, any app or operating system is just a list of instructions. With good practise, you can write down your own. You should probably start off by making small programs. Then, when you’ve got the hang of things, you can move onto more complicated things. like action games. Then, when you’ve really got the hang of things, move onto coding Java. But remember, start off on scratch.
Computers are used for many things, like playing games, making 3D graphics for films and art, running scientific simulations and keeping huge databases full of useful information.
Beneath all that clever coding, the idea stays the same: computers are machines that solve problems by making vast numbers of mathematical calculations. To a computer, everything is a number. A picture? Number. A sound? Number. A word? Number.
A computers ‘brain’ is called the central prosseccing unit (CPU). This microchip consists of many millions of tiny electronic comductors and components, aranged in ways that allow them to calculate faily simple maths but at high speed. The chip races through billions of sums per second. That’s even more than your maths teacher can do!
The CPU has three main jobs: reading and writing the computer’s memory, carrying out calculations and tasks and sending and recieving messages from other devices.
Together, these parts and many other optional extras are known as the computer’s hardware. They are connected together on a motherboard, which is a complicated circuit which applies power to the whole system.
The instructions that tell the hardware what to do is called an Operating System, or OS for short. Some of these include Microsoft Windows, Manjuro Linux and macOS.
Most OS’s are written in C++. Don’t think it is as easy as Scratch though; it is low level, meaning you have to know a lot about the computer you’re working with. Without this, the program will go terribly wrong.
Other coding languages include Java, Python, C and PHP. All of these are different in many ways. For example, Java is syntactically similar to C, but programs are compiled to byte code which run on a virtual machine program. This means Java programs can run on many different types of computers.
Basically, any app or operating system is just a list of instructions. With good practise, you can write down your own. You should probably start off by making small programs. Then, when you’ve got the hang of things, you can move onto more complicated things. like action games. Then, when you’ve really got the hang of things, move onto coding Java. But remember, start off on scratch.
Computers are used for many things, like playing games, making 3D graphics for films and art, running scientific simulations and keeping huge databases full of useful information.
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