Bits, Bytes and Life
Copyright© 2026 by Asa Strong
Chapter 6: A New Education
Isaac looked pensive for a moment, and then looked at me like he was seeing into my soul.
“Jack, do you want to learn this? You know, it will be a hard row to hoe.”
I thought for a moment. Did I really want to be a programmer? Hell, I only had a vague idea of what a programmer did.
“Isaac, to be honest I don’t know. I don’t even know if I have the ability to do the job?”
He thought for a moment then said, “You probably have the ability, or the agency would not have spent the time and money to recruit you. The real question to ask yourself is if you are willing to put in the effort it will take to learn?”
Wow, Isaac had cut right to the crux of the problem. In other words, it was up to me to in the end.
As I sat and mulled it over several things became apparent: One, the agency was not going to let me off the hook just because I didn’t feel comfortable. Second I had my pride; I wouldn’t allow myself not to do my best.
“Isaac,” I said. “I will try my best. I was not raised to quit just because something is hard to do. I want to try this.”
Isaac’s face broke into a big smile and he said, “OK, I’ll help you, but you need to keep quiet about it. I’m a maintenance tech, and around here that means the bottom of the pile. Can you do that?”
“Isaac, if that’s the way you want it, it’s fine by me.”
“OK, then let’s get started!”
“The first thing to remember when working with computers is that they are dumb machines. I don’t mean just a little dumb either. In fact, they are so dumb, that if you give them incorrect instructions, they will do what you told them, not what you wanted. They have to be told each and every thing to do. The way we humans do that is to develop programs that control the machine at a very minute level.
“The next thing to remember is that just like you and I can talk and understand each other using the English language, computers need a way for us to inform them exactly what to do. The means of doing this is by using a language the computer can understand. There are many different languages that can be used to talk to a computer and we could get ourselves wrapped up in a discussion for days about the merits of each.
“We are not going to do that. If we did, you would end up overloaded with so much information you would soon be lost.
“What we are going to do is start with the basics. The good Doctor had the right idea, just the wrong way of presenting it.
Isaac paused for a moment; his continence showing he was deep in thought. “Computers are like a bunch of light switches all in a single row. The pattern of those turned on and those turned off determine what the computer will do. Does that make sense?” He asked.
“Is that what Doctor Edwards said was binary?” I asked.
Isaac laughed and said, “Yeah that was in there somewhere, but even I got lost in his logic. You must have understood more of what he said than I did.”
Isaac continued. “In computer terms, the light switches would be called bits. Each bit can be on or off or... 1 or 0. You with me so far?”
“I think so.” I responded.
“OK, now imagine many thousands of light switches all in a single row. That would represent information stored in a computer. The area inside the computer where we store information is called memory. Each memory location is like our light switch; it has only two states, on or off.
Isaac paused for a moment then continued. “Let’s pause for a moment and make sure you are with me. OK?”
“Ummm, sure let me try.” I said
“Computers are just machines and they will only do what you tell them. They also store information in bits. A bit can either be on or off.”
I paused for a moment and thought back to my algebra class in high school.
“Isaac, you said that bits were all in a row. Is that like in algebra when they say something is linear?”
Isaac looked like he was astonished with my question. He then said, “Jack, maybe this won’t be as hard as I first thought. You just hit the nail on the head. That is exactly the way bits are stored in memory.”
“This makes the next part rather easy. Think about this, you have thousands of bits all in a row. How does the computer keep track of where certain bits are stored?”
I pondered his question for a moment. All those bits in a row would be hard to use or understand without some higher way of referencing them.
“Isaac,” I said “there has to be some way of keeping track of the bits at a higher level.”