Mysterionymous
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Ive never had any technical training in programming but is Binary an actual programming language? I know network guys use it but do programmers?
Binary
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Outside of the lower-level classroom activities binary wasn't used much in any of my networking classes in school. It was just used to show how networks determine where packets should go and what is internal traffic vs. external.
The same thing applies to programmers. We don't program anything in binary (except on rare occasion) but everything gets turned into binary by the computer running it.
The same thing applies to programmers. We don't program anything in binary (except on rare occasion) but everything gets turned into binary by the computer running it.
Hello and welcome to the forum. You have asked a very very involved and complex question. In short yes binary was and is used to program computers. Binary is a numerical system based on two states 0 and 1. We normally work in denary which is a numerical system based on 10 digits ie 0 to 9. We use that system because we have ten digits or fingers. Computer programers because every piece of electronics that enable a computer to run is based on a system if switches and switches only have two states ie on or off. The on state is represented by a 1 and the off state is represented by a 0. Whilst programing in 1s and 0s can be and is used it can be very time consuming and takes all of your mental skills to bring about a result so programming languages were developed such as C, C+, CC+, Fortran etc. There are lots of different progarmming languages and these languages are specific to a programming task, They try to use a logical command rather than a series of 1s and 0s to perform a certain task within a program. But the bottom line is that all programming languages can be broken down to the base language used which is binary.
I'm afraid that that is a very simplistic explanation and really if you want more knowledge and experience in this sort of stuff you really need to study computer science. I am by no means an expert on these things but I was brought up using personal computers such as the Sinclaire ZX80 which had to be programmed in binary code to perform very simple tasks such as drawing a mono coloured circle on the screen. That bit of binary coding actually took up a large part of the page in the Sinclaire magazine that attempted to teach us computer sprogs how to program. I never did learn how to do it and eventually just went down the road of building, using and repairing computers and letting others do the programming.
I'm afraid that that is a very simplistic explanation and really if you want more knowledge and experience in this sort of stuff you really need to study computer science. I am by no means an expert on these things but I was brought up using personal computers such as the Sinclaire ZX80 which had to be programmed in binary code to perform very simple tasks such as drawing a mono coloured circle on the screen. That bit of binary coding actually took up a large part of the page in the Sinclaire magazine that attempted to teach us computer sprogs how to program. I never did learn how to do it and eventually just went down the road of building, using and repairing computers and letting others do the programming.
For a direct answer to your question, no, binary is NOT a programming language. As Pete.i said, binary is a number system and the only thing that a computer actually works with.
Languages are what humans understand. The purpose of a programming language is to translate what humans understand into binary so a computer can process it.
Today's Dilbert comic strip seems appropriate here:
Languages are what humans understand. The purpose of a programming language is to translate what humans understand into binary so a computer can process it.
Today's Dilbert comic strip seems appropriate here:
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Here you go. Something to get your teeth into if you are really interested in this stuff. I hope you are because this is really where the money is to be made in computing. This is just a start.
How Bits and Bytes Work - HowStuffWorks
How Bits and Bytes Work - HowStuffWorks
Mysterionymous
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wow thanks everyone for all the informative replies. I'm currently attending a community college (looking to transfer to a university after i graduate) for IT and am generally curious about programming. I was initially intimidated by it because I'm not great with advanced math but I'm really eager to learn all that i can about programming and syntax and all that good stuff. I just think it's cool.
...Really?
Never got into subnet masking using CIDR notations and figuring out how many hosts vs. networks you have??
Not saying I know more than you... but I remember doing that crap because I hated it!! Then again, with the advent of tools like SolarWind's subnet calculator... guess that math gets lost.
No, Software engineer with a focus on networking. After that class where we programmed the physical controllers (which needed the binary and knowledge on how it was used to calculate subnets and such) we worked making our own porotocols in the upper-level classes using our controllers from the lower-level
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