Binary, what is it good for?

Jared Matta
2 min readApr 5, 2020

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Binary, is the word if you haven’t heard. You may have heard of computers using binary to compute and process information. While that’s great and all, how is it used? Invented in 1689 as a simple yet, complex counting system. Easy being that you can pretty much describe anything in your environment around you by simply using 1s’ and 0s’. Furthermore, did you know, every time you check your email, watch a movie, or send a text, you are speaking in binary. 11011 (this is the emoji for binary if you didn’t know.) Wait one second, just how is this all going on if we’re speaking in our languages. In comes Binary code, computers use this code (or language) for two main reasons. One being 1s and 0s are very easy to store in computer memory, compared to long drawn out words. Second, computers think using a device called a transistor. Transistors work similarly to an on and off switch, High output/mode being on and ranging from anywhere from 1 to 5 volts, and Low output/mode being off, equaling 0 volts. Here we can set a simple variable of 1 to High, and you guessed it, a 0 to Low, giving the only two options. The reading of these two numbers/ variables is picked up by the computer’s processors, which uses the state of the transistor to control the functionality of the computer, according to the software specifications. While it seems simple enough binary is a very complex process. For instance, 01010100 references the letter T, but it also references the number 84, and it also references a hue of color. An example of any pixel of color on your screen, the RGB (red, green, blue), each spectrum is made up of one set of binary code. Each binary code tells the video card what strength/frequency the color should be, it’s then translated to a pixel on your screen. This also works the same for sound. So how can you tell them apart? You can’t, in fact without some sort of reference. Just like you can’t tell what the word DA means, without a reference to its language, it could be Russian, Spanish, or English. And you need a similar context to know if you’re looking at binary numbers or binary text. Binary is very powerful, but it isn’t the end. Ternary computer are in research, which has three circuits in an alternating state, and the elusive Quantum computers that have two simultaneous circuits that both hold their own state. For now Binary is everywhere around us, and hopefully, I left it just as mysterious as it was, when you started this blog. 11011

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Jared Matta
Jared Matta

Written by Jared Matta

Flatiron Graduate, Full-Stack developer on his job search. I love working with Javascript and React.

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