A computer can’t understand the human language, so users have to give input in the form of base-2 numerals that are also called binary numbers.
Human language is totally unrecognizable for the machine. So, you can’t give it direct commands to write the alphabets or digits on the screen.
So, when you press a button of any alphabet or digit on your keyboard, it is decoded to binary digits and is then converted to numbers.
It is the simplest method available for the computing system so you use these numbers and take output in the form of alphabets.
Before going into details, here we will give you a brief view of the binary numbers and their working.
What are binary numbers?
Binary numbers also called the base-2 numeral, are the two digits that the computer understands. 0 and 1 are binary numbers and the input given by these numbers is called machine language.
As it is difficult for a human to understand binary numbers and you can’t easily encode these numbers to convert them to human language.
Suppose you have an alphabet “T” and its binary form is 01110100. But if you are asked to write a sentence having numerous alphabets, you can’t translate these numbers easily.
So, you have to get help from any binary translator that can convert binary code into text and make it understandable for humans easily.
The computer uses these binary numbers instead of decimals. Here we will give you guys a detailed reason that why a computer uses binary numbers.
But before this, we will tell you the difference between decimal and binary numbers.
Difference between binary and decimal numbers
Binary numbers are base-2 numerals that the computer understands and based on which it works. But in our daily life, we use base-10 numbers.
The single-digit says 1 or 2 is called unit and the digits above 10 are called unit-10. These are decimal numbers and we make our calculation on the base-10 numbers.
So, the simple thing that you can get from the whole of this scenario is that human language when given to the computer, is first converted to the form of 0 and 1.
Suppose you are giving the command to the computer “John” it will decode the alphabet and read it as “01001010011011110110100001101110” which is actually machine language.
These are further encoded and the given command will be shown on the screen that will be readable by users.
Now we will discuss that why a computer uses binary numbers instead of decimals.
Why does a computer use base-2 numerals?
The computer works on two digits are 0 and 1. So, you can’t give the inputs in base-10 numbers that are human understanding language.
So, this thing is clear to us that digit other than binary numbers are not understandable for the machine.
If you give the command in human language, it will first decode the text and make it understandable for the machine.
Decimals are not understandable for the computer so it reads the base-2 numerals and decodes those numbers and converts them to alphabets.
Final words
Computers can store and process information in the form of electrical pulses. There are only two states that an electrical pulse can be – On or Off, or high or low voltage.
All those ‘zeros’ and ‘ones’ make the code crazy long and hard to read, which is why some people came up with a brilliant idea: Divide everything by some number (usually it’s 2), called the base of the system.
This way, instead of representing numbers as sets of switches, they represent them as sets of on-off pulses.
So, it makes it easy for the machine to understand the provided language and decode them to human-understandable language.