Oftentimes, as I learn to program, I think to myself, ‘What in the hell, how does this work…?’ So, to supplement our journey on learning to talk to the Universe, (which you can read here), this series is intended to provide information on how computers work and some of the background on programming concepts. So, welcome to the What in the Hell series, where we will learn a whole lot of new terminology and just how computers work. This first article begins with the general operation of a computer. Later articles will take a deeper dive into how computers work!
Perhaps you’ve made it this far in life without understanding the how of a computer. You can turn one on. You can go on the internet and browse your favorite website. You can write a paper in word processing software. You maybe even know how to do some fancy calculations in excel. But chances are, you are closer to my experience level than that of a professional computer wizard. And my experience level is at beginner- at least as far as how understanding how a computer works. I’ve been using computers for over two decades now, so how the hell can I be a beginner? You see, there is knowing how to turn on a computer and browse the internet and writing an essay for that pesky college class. Then there is actually understanding what a computer is and how it works. I grew up with the emergence of personal computers. I remember learning how to type in fifth grade, when I was around nine years old. And yet, as I type this over two decades later, I only just learned what the hell a hard drive is and what it does. Sure, I knew how to turn on a computer. I could use the Microsoft Office suite of products. I could browse the internet easily. But ask me to do more than make a graph in Excel and all you would get is a blank look. Ask me to define what a kilobyte is or a megabyte or a gigabyte and my only answer would be “the size of a file”. I couldn’t tell you how many bytes are in a kilobyte or how many bits are in a byte.
Then I came across this little field called astronomy. And the magic of the heavens opened up to me. Literally. By looking through a telescope for the first time in life at age 25, my mind was blown. I saw the gaseous clouds of a nebula. I saw the planets in shockingly bright colors. Saturn looks like someone drew a cartoon in the sky just in case you were wondering. What does this have to do with computers? Well in the years since first looking through a telescope, I learned quite a lot about this thing called image processing, where I would download stunning images from the NASA probes and telescopes in space and turn their black and white data into pretty pictures. And eventually I became aware that to unlock the full extent of image processing, I would need to know Python, a programming language. And I thought, well, hell, if I am going to learn Python, I might as well change my career. So here I am, dear reader, learning what the hell a computer actually is and how it works and learning how to code.
So here is my version of events— the way I understand computers. And hopefully I can explain it in a way that you can understand, too. Because my brain cannot fully grasp how to correctly use a programming language without understanding how a computer works, how programming languages have evolved, and how the hell modern programming languages work. These articles are not meant to be all inclusive, so there are things that will definitely be left out. Alright, let’s begin! Buckle up and join me on a wild ride to find out just what the hell a computer is!
The supercomputer owned by NASA!
Image credit: https://www.nas.nasa.gov/hecc/resources/pleiades.html
First things first— computer parts. There are computers in almost everything we interact with. There is a computer in your car. There is a computer in your smartphone. There’s a computer in your TV. There’s a computer in your thermostat. There may even be a computer in your coffee maker if you are into advanced technological household items. Don’t worry if you’re not — I usually don’t buy any new technology until my current things are like 8+ years old. Now, these don’t look like the computers we expect with a monitor and a keyboard and a mouse. But, they are computers nonetheless. And there are even supercomputers, as seen in the image above! But in this article I will focus mostly on the traditional computer that you might have on your desktop or as a laptop. This article will cover the parts that make up a computer. How it actually works will be covered in the second article!
The main parts of a computer are as follows:
Processors
Memory
Storage
Motherboard
Peripheral devices
These parts can be further divided into specific parts:
Processors
Central processing unit (CPU)
Graphics processing unit (GPU)
Memory:
Random Access Memory
Volatile memory
Non-volatile memory
Storage:
Hard disk drive
Solid state drive
Peripheral devices
Input
Keyboard
Microphone
Mouse
Output
Speakers
Monitor
Printer
One of the most critical pieces for a computer is the central processing unit, or CPU. The CPU is in charge of executing instructions for the computer. The CPU also has arithmetic functions, such as addition, subtraction, etc. The graphics processing unit, or GPU, is also fairly important to a computer — at least, if you want to see anything on it. A computer can technically function without one installed, but it looks much better if you use one, especially if you like to play games on a computer. The graphics processing unit plays a huge role in rendering beautiful images and videos on a computer monitor. So these processors allow the computer to run software, perform calculations, and render a graphical interface for the user to interact with.
While a computer needs processors to run, it also needs other hardware to be able to store and use things. We refer to these things as data. The data gives us information — it’s the images, the text, the videos, everything on the Internet, and so on. So we need a way to access this data in a computer and to use it and store it. One important piece of hardware that does this is the hard disk drive (HDD). Now, when I first learned how an HDD worked, it blew my mind and I realized just how little I know about how computers work. Like, how do people invent this stuff?? But how hard drives work will be covered in depth a separate article. For now, just know that a hard drive is a device that stores data and actually moves around — yup, it spins. And it reads that data using a magnet. What? Yea. It’s very interesting. Oh yea, and hard drives have something called non-volatile memory. Non-volatile? What the hell does that mean? Hmmm, well if volatile means to be rather unpredictable, perhaps non-volatile is the opposite. Non-volatile is stable and non-volatile storage means that nothing will be deleted. So when the computer is turned off, the data is still there. Thus, the hard drive of the computer has non-volatile memory and keeps a record of everything saved to that memory.
But speaking of non-volatile memory, there is another type of memory a computer has, known as Random Access Memory, or RAM. RAM is the opposite of non-volatile memory, it is volatile memory. And as I just mentioned, volatile means to be unpredictable, or in computer terms, temporary. So RAM is temporary storage, not permanent storage. Because RAM is temporary and what the computer uses while it is on, RAM is easier and faster to access. This is in contrast to non-volatile memory which takes a little bit longer to access. So RAM is used for short-term data storage while the hard drive is used for long-term data storage.
So you are probably familiar with the hard drive mentioned above, but perhaps there is something else you might have heard of when it comes to storage — the solid state drive (SSD). As the word solid hints, this type of data storage doesn’t move. And just like a hard drive, it has non-volatile data which doesn't get erased. And here, we will begin to see some trade-offs. Perhaps your computer has a hard drive with a huge amount of storage — say one terabyte (what the hell is a terabyte?? We’ll get to that in another article). Now, one terabyte (TB) is fairly huge (at least to us, but as computing advances storage sizes will become even larger), and hard drives can have up to 22 TB. While solid state drives can actually hold up to 100 TB, trying to buy an SSD with that much memory is incredibly expensive. Even just buying a 10 TB SSD can cost hundreds of dollars while the same amount for an HDD is much cheaper. So, SSDs can have way more storage and are faster, but fairly expensive, while an HDD can have a decent amount of storage and be cheaper, but a tad slower than an SSD.
And all of this is powered by the motherboard. It is the powerhouse of the computer (much like the mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell). This is the main circuit board that connects all of the computer’s components together and allows them to communicate. The motherboard is what houses the CPU and GPU and any additional processors. It also is where the storage and memory for a computer are located and can connect input and output devices as well. Without the motherboard, there is no computer.
Now, before we get too lost in the world of computer terminology, let’s focus on the peripherals. The term peripherals makes the most sense when thinking of a desktop computer. There’s the computer itself, and then attached to it is the monitor, the keyboard, and perhaps a printer somewhere in the vicinity. Hence, they are peripherals. And they are usually not fused together, unless you use a fancy Apple computer. Instead, they are connected by wires (or perhaps you have nice wireless connections). Laptops can have similar peripherals, such as a mouse, but they do tend to be fused together as one unit, with the computer underneath the keyboard, the mouse turned into a touchpad, and the monitor attached to the top with the ability to close like a book. If desired, a mouse, speakers, and more can be attached to a laptop using wires or even going wireless if one has the money. These important peripheral devices are known as input/output devices. They provide input into the computer, such as by typing on a keyboard or speaking into a microphone. They provide output from a computer via a monitor displaying information, speakers playing music, printing that important term paper, and more.
Now, at this very early part in the journey, your perception of a computer will begin evolving. The computer is no longer simply used to write painful essays that are due at midnight or to browse social media and compare yourself to everyone else. The computer becomes a metallic counterpart. Electricity powers it the way food and water power our own bodies. It gains information through a keyboard and a mouse the way our bodies gain information by using our senses. The computer provides output via a monitor, speakers, or a printer just as a human can produce noise by speaking or produce movement through muscles. And so, naturally, if a computer can receive input and produce output and store information, perhaps we can communicate with it. And this is where computer programming comes into play. Through computer programming we will learn to talk to a computer and get it to do things for us. And thus, we are one step closer to conversing with the Universe. And perhaps one day, we will even learn how to get a computer to talk back to us as it makes its own decisions!
RESOURCES
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_hard_disk_drives
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