Back in the day, when I was at school, it was all BBC Acorns, Commodore 64's etc. And computer lessons had students just typing lots of ones and zeros. I realise that is some 20+ years ago now, but is binary still really important in computers?
2007-11-29 22:14:09 · 9 answers · asked by Spawnee 5 in Computers & Internet ➔ Programming & Design
You've all been very helpful. But I shall leave it to the "experts" to decide who had the best answer.
2007-12-02 00:58:30 · update #1
yes.. they are important in computers.. its the only language that the computer understands..binary and hexa i think..
even now, other programming language and all of them are translating what ever that is written in them into binary..new programs just make it easier for humans..i think..
2007-11-29 22:19:16 · answer #1 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
To be honest I think you're misremembering what happened at school. I was in school about the same time, with BBC computers etc, and even then programming was never about entering lots of ones and zeroes. At that point we did work in Basic, or for the real hard-core types you could use assembly language.
At a fundamental level, it's true that all computers can understand is binary code. But it's not very productive to just work with that, so we use high-level languages to take away the grunt work. What they do is encapsulate some of the common functions so that, for example, to print something to the screen all you need to do is say print "whatever" rather than knowing the exact sequence of ones and zeroes that the computer needs to perform that task. When the program is compiled, it translates the language into machine code and then acts on it.
All programming is done this way now, and has been really ever since we moved away from punched cards. Even something as complex as Microsoft Windows is programmed mainly in C++, a fairly high-level language.
As any programmer will tell you, working with these languages can actually be fun! That certainly wouldn't be the case if all we had to work with was ones and zeroes.
2007-11-30 12:38:57 · answer #2 · answered by Daniel R 6 · 1⤊ 0⤋
Wow! were you so disconnected from the world of computing? For about a quarter of a century eh?
Binary number system makes up the bare bones of a computer's language, yes. But then, interpreters and compilers came in to make the work of writing 'actual binary number programs' computerized. It might sound like we're splurging too much on these computer programming languages to you. But believe me, these languages have opened up interesting avenues for many researchers to work on and publish great many papers.
2007-11-30 07:21:23 · answer #3 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
Yes they are - it is always binary as the most basic language for computers. This is because they are electrical objects and the binary is translated via 'gates' - the '1' & '0' is translated by the machine to an on / off function, which is completed by electrical pulses. This is then translated to ;'machine language' which humans usually write to make programming easier, which in turn is compiled by other programming languages such as C++, which is easier for humans to write than machine language.
Most of the programming languages are capable of doing what we want now, so it's quite unusually for any commercial language to use machine language - those people who write C++ have to understand machine language, but those who use it do not.
2007-11-30 06:27:18 · answer #4 · answered by sicoll007 4 · 2⤊ 0⤋
It is, for the foreseeable future, the only storage system for computers. That being said, very very few programs are written directly in binary anymore. There is almost always an abstracted language transformed into machine code.
2007-11-30 06:21:20 · answer #5 · answered by Agent Feyd 4 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Oh yes. At the most basic level even the most modern of computers comes down to binary maths. (As does the human brain if it comes to that.)
2007-11-30 06:44:16 · answer #6 · answered by mustardcharlie 3 · 0⤊ 0⤋
Behind the scenes they are, but programming languages have moved on a bit since then! It tends to focus on using proper words, have a look at a tutorial for VB.NET and you'll see what I mean!
2007-11-30 06:25:31 · answer #7 · answered by Anonymous · 0⤊ 0⤋
I think, from the answers above, the answer is yes. But in my personal experience - and I guess the experience of several million other people - Microsoft programmes are written in an entirely different language!
;-)
2007-11-30 11:22:13 · answer #8 · answered by politicsguy 5 · 0⤊ 0⤋
yep
2007-11-30 06:21:49 · answer #9 · answered by Thomas B 2 · 0⤊ 0⤋