2. Bits, Bytes and Binary

In primary school, my teacher taught us computer science by using an empty cereal packet, knitting needles and hole-punched card. This was before I progressed to binary. This YouTube video shows how simple binary is.



Computers process bits in multiples of eight ie 8, 16, 32, 64 and 128. A bit can be either 0 or 1, while a byte is a sequence of bits. The more bits, the greater the ability to access more data.

Binary can represent text. For example:

01110111  01101111  01110010  01100100

is binary for word

Converting text to binary can take a while, so using an encoder such as the one on The Problem Site is really useful.

From the 1970s, converting binary into text was through the American Standard Code for Information Interchange (ASCII) which is basic text. When you use Notepad, you will see the limitations of ASCII in terms of language and formatting. When Unicode was developed, it allowed different language scripts such as 中文 (ie Chinese). ASCII is built into Unicode and is compatible with it.

I produced my website using Notepad before converting it into a web document by changing the extension to .html. If you right click and view page source, you can see the html markup.

Some documents can only be viewed properly with specific programs, for example, you will need Microsoft Word for a document with .doc extension. Problems can also arise when documents produced in new versions of the software are not compatible with older ones.