Often we’re told that data to computers are just ones and zeros. What this means is that computers don’t actually understand or know what the data is that they’re dealing with and what they’re referring to.

Like, say you send your email to your friend—technically, your computer doesn’t really understand what that data is. Even when that data is stored in its memory and as that computer is transmitting that information to another computer, and then that computer receives that email, that information is transmitted as ones and zeros.

So, this is what is meant by “your computer stores data as ones and zeros.”

What your computer does with that data is take those ones and zeros and display them in a format understandable to a human—in the form of words, characters, phrases, and sentences. So, it is actually the human that assigns value and meaning to that data. But the computer itself doesn’t know what that data is.

It’s kind of like if you imagine you’re in a room with two people who are speaking in a foreign language. You’re sharing what one person is saying with the other, but you don’t actually know what those people are saying. Only those two people who are communicating know what they’re saying.

You can take what person A is saying and share it with person B, but you don’t know what the words mean—only person A and person B know. This is kind of like what’s happening with computers. Computers are just relaying that information from one person to another.

So, how exactly do computers store data as ones and zeros, then transmit and share that information or communicate it to other computers? And what does this have to do with bits and bytes?

In this video, I’m going to be talking about what bits are, what bytes are, and then I’m going to show you an example of how data is actually stored in a computer in a program.

Thank you for watching, and happy coding! 💻
-Henrik