Disclaimer: This is my interpretation of the concepts in computer and networking the way I understand it. Everyone has a different understanding of the topics, and how everyone sees something could be different; I am just showing this from my perspective. Of course, what I understood could very well be misinformed or totally wrong. Please do not treat what you see here as fact and always do your own research. These should be for entertainment and comedic purposes only 😉. Enjoy!

Welcome everyone! to my Noob 101 class. I’m your host Laz or you can call me professor Laz 😎 and I will be teaching you all about the core concept that you will see on the internet about computers and networking so that when you hear people mention these terms, you might have some idea what they are talking about or just simply nod your head and smile, that worked too😉. Before we start, I would like to show everyone my credential: I have been in the industry for over 30 years as a professional freeloader so I totally know what I’m talking about. I have also been granted the honorable title of The Noobiest of Noobies. So you better take a seat and listen (or read) whichever suited yourself 🤷‍♂️.

Today’s topic is the most fundamental concept in computers we will be discussing binary. So let first answer the question of what is binary.

What is binary?

You see, when you are born, you are either Male or Fe… Oh, wait! I got the wrong binary 😅. What I want to talk about is the computer Binary and not the other binary since well that one is too complicated in today’s society. Computer binary is much more straightforward, It is either 0 or 1. Why 0 and 1 you ask? Unlike us humans, the computer does not understand human language (at least not yet) and they are communicated by reading the state that represents with 0 and 1. 0 mean off and 1 mean on, I’m sure everyone here would have a light switch at their home or at least seen one before when you switch up, mean 1 the light turn on and switch down mean 0 and the light is off (of course this is only meant as an analogy so don’t start asking me a question about what about a smart switch or 2-ways switches…)

How does a computer understand instruction with only 0 and 1?

Well, you will be surprised how sophisticated we managed to create the computer, I mean it never ceased to amaze me how much we accomplished in technology only by changing adding/re-arrange the order of the switch to create a circuit and take advantage of the on/off state to create so many great things. We created them with the help of logic gates and the property of semiconductors.

Logic gates

This is called logic gates because it is conditional to allow the desired outputs with the given inputs. I’m pretty sure this makes no sense for some of you and that is totally fine. You don’t need to know all the detail I will mention briefly about it how it worked.

Did you see all the logic gates such as AND/OR? So imagine what can you do it that? Let have a scenario such as you and your partner want to go watch a movie, the input is that each one of you needs to have a ticket so there are 2 inputs, you and your partner. The state is that either you have a ticket (1) or you don’t (0). The outcome is that you can get in and enjoy the movie date(1) or you don’t (0). Let just say the AND gate receptionist is very strict and he only allows you to come in if both you and your partner have the ticket, so to put it into the logic gate would be (1) AND (1) = (1), if you or your partner doesn’t the ticket then well you just have to go somewhere since the outcome would be (1) AND (0) = (0). But if you get lucky and meet the OR gate receptionist. He is a happy-go-lucky guy and pretty chill, so only one of you needs the ticket so (1) OR (0) = (1). My guess is that the OR gate guy is the supervisor or he just doesn’t care about the theater policy so yea just making sure one of you has the ticket or there is nothing he can do 😉. There are other logic gates too such as NAND (not AND), this guy just takes whatever decision AND gate guy made and does the opposite so you might be lucky with him if one of you or both does not have the ticket…This theater has a lot of quirky receptionists I can tell you that much. That was a bit of a dumb example from me but I hope you enjoy it and can relate to how the logic gate works with binary. By utilizing these logic gates and stacking them up, chains multiple…we are able to manipulate the desired output given 2 or more inputs and it is important as you can see once we have control of the outcome we can make it work the way we wanted.

Semi-conductor

I know, I know it sounded very fancy, what is a semi-conductor? Well, it is kinda a bit of a letdown but it is just exactly what it sounded, Conductor conduct electricity, which mean that material allowed electricity to pass through them. So semi-conductor means semi-conduct electricity, the keyword here is Semi, which means it can sometimes conduct electricity but sometimes it does not want to conduct electricity like a little kid throws a temper tantrum. But all jokes aside, the ability to conduct electricity and sometimes act as an insulator(not allowed electricity through) is the key for semiconductors and we were able to control when it is a conductor and when it is an insulator. Do you notice anything by now? Isn’t it kind of look like a switch? If you see that then congratulations, you finally understand the basics of semiconductors. With the ability to control when the electricity passes through, we can make a binary of that, 1 for conduct and 0 for isolated. Now you see everything comes in a full circle? And once we have that we can create logic gates to manipulate the outcome we want. And by the outcome, we use it to do math and calculation. Now just scale it up by a lot and I mean a lot and you get yourself a computer. Now you see why we called it the computer? Because it computes…literally 😂.

The computer understands binary because this was the foundation of how the computer was created and that is the only language it knows (for now) Everything else we have right now is built upon the binary of 0 and 1. Crazy right? Even the screen you are seeing is just a set of instructions telling the tiny pixel in the display to turn on or off.

That is a wrap for this brief lesson on binary. In the next lesson, we will be discussing how we can use binary to do…Math…Dun dun dun! 😱 I know people aren’t really a fan of math but don’t worry it will only go as far as addition, subtraction, and maybe multiplication so you should be able to follow along 😉. That is all for today from Professor Laz, I need to go back to my place and take nap 😴 . Until next time!

• Prof. Laz – Noob 101.