Secret Agents have Secret Codes
How does a computer handle files? How does it know one file is your letter home to Mum whilst another is a picture of next door's cat? It is all to do with codes and file layouts. This week's article takes a look at how different files are treated by your computer.
Why would you want to know this? Well, one of my sons asked me why I used Notepad. Why not use Word all the time? I actually write these articles in Word, copy it into Notepad then copy that into the Suite101.com's edit article facility. Why do I have to do all this? Read on!
First off, it might help to explain that all files are stored as numbers. In fact, a computer can only understand two things. 1 and 0 - On or Off. To us, a computer would be excruciating to use if everything was just one's and zeroes. We use words, pictures, sounds and so on so the computer's one's and zeroes have to be converted into something we can readily recognise and understand.
Secret Agents have Secret Codes
When I grew up, we were all "Men from U.N.C.L.E.," a very popular 1960's TV series where secret agents foiled the plans of those who wanted to take over the world. As men from U.N.C.L.E., we kids would devise secret codes so that we could send messages to each other without others knowing what they were. Unless you knew the code, you wouldn't understand the message. You had to decipher a coded message to read it.
A bit like a computer really. It has to decipher our "words," "pictures" etc. into ones and zeroes so that it can understand what we want, then it has to convert it back to something we can recognise when it has finished.
Thing is - what code do we use? Suppose we used numbers instead of letters. If you asked a group of 10 people to allocate a number to each letter of the alphabet, the chances are they would come up with 10 different answers. Do lowercase letters come before capitals? What about the punctuation symbols? Unless everyone agrees a standard code we can't communicate with each other as what is a sensible message from me will turn out as garbage to you as you are using a different code.
Apply this to computer manufacturers all having their own separate codes and you can see that computers won't be able to talk to each other.
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