Hardware Components
The brain of the computer.
What is a CPU?
CPU: Central Processing Unit
Functions like adding, subtracting, copying data are all instructions that our CPU can carry out.
Every single program on your computer, while extremely complex, is broken down into very small and simple instructions found in our instruction set.
Instruction sets are hard-coded into our CPU.
The whole package that manages our computer's resources and lets us interact with it.
What is an operating system?
A collection of instructions that tell a computer how to work.
What is software?
It is composed of eight bits of zeros and ones.
What is a byte?
A byte is composed of eight bits of zeros and ones.
The computer's short term memory.
What is RAM?
RAM: Random Access Memory
We use RAM to store data that we want to access quickly.
This data changes all the time so it isn't permanent.
Almost all RAM is volatile, which means that once we power off our machines, the data stored in RAM is cleared.
The most common operating systems.
What are Microsoft Windows, Apple macOS and Linux?
Web browsers and text editors are this type of software.
What is application software?
Application Software is any software created to fulfill a specific need, like a text editor, web browser, or graphics editor.
The number of possible values we can have with 8 bits.
What is 256?
Bits use the binary system, which is also known as the base-2 numeral system. So 2^8 allows us 256 values from 0 to 255.
It's the backbone that ties the computer's components together at one spot and allows them to talk to each other.
What is a motherboard?
The two main parts of an operating system.
What are the Kernel Space and the User Space?
The kernel is the main core of an operating system.
It talks directly to our hardware and manages our systems resources.
As users, we don't interact with the kernel directly.
The user space is basically made up of everything outside the kernel.
The users thinks that we interact with directly like system programs, user interfaces, etcetera.
The BIOS and Windows OS are called this.
What is system software?
System software is software used to keep our core system running, like operating system tools, utilities and firmware.
Firmware is software that's permanently stored on a computer component. (BIOS)
The highest decimal value we can represent with a byte.
What is 255?
There are 256 values in a byte, from the decimal number 0 to 255.
128 64 32 16 8 4 2 1
Allows us to store all of our computer's data on this device.
What is a hard drive?
We store all of our computer's data on our hard drive, which allows us to store our programs, music, pictures, etc.
There are two basic hard drive types used today.
Hard disk drives, or HDDs, use a spinning platter and a mechanical arm to read and write information.
HDDs are prone to a lot more damage because there are a lot of moving parts.
SSD: Solid State Drives
SSDs have no moving parts, slimmer, but more expensive.
A solid state drive (SSD) is a newer, faster type of device that stores data
Allows us to interact with programs directly, such as text editors, music players, system settings, user interfaces, etc.
What is the User Space?
This type of software language is translated into machine instructions beforehand.
What is compiled language?
A compiled programming language uses human readable instructions, then sends them through a compiler.
The compiler takes the human instructions and compiles them into machine instructions.
Example is C++
The other type is interpreted language - these aren't compiled ahead of time. These are called a Script. Example is Python.
This character encoding allows us to store a character in more than one byte.
What is UTF-8?
UTF-8: Unicode Transformation Format – 8-bit.
The most prevalent encoding standard used today.
Along with having the same ASCII table,
it also lets us use a variable number of bytes.
What do I mean by that? Think of any emoji.
It's not possible to make emojis with a single byte, so as we can only store one character in a byte, instead UTF 8 allows us to store a character in more than one byte.
UTF 8 is built off the Unicode Standard.
Provides the power to the computer.
What is a power supply?
A power supply converts the AC we get from the wall into low voltage DC power that we can use and transmit throughout our computer.
This part of the operating system that is responsible for file management, process management, memory management, and I/O management.
What is the Kernel space?
File Management: A way of organizing files.
Process Management: Allows us to perform several tasks at once. For example using a text document while listening to music.
Memory Management: The kernel optimizes memory usage and make sure our applications have enough memory to run.
I/O Management:
This is how our kernel talks to external devices like disks, keyboards, networks, connections, audio devices, and more.
I/O management is anything that can give us input or that we can use for output of data.
The process of assigning either unique version names or unique version numbers to computer software.
What is software versioning?
For example, software version 1.3.1 means that the software is in its first major version, with three additional functionalities added, and one patch fix implemented.
The character encoding that uses 128 English characters, from 0 to 127.
What is ASCII?
ASCII: American Standard Code For Information Interchange
It is a code for representing 128 English characters as numbers, with each letter assigned a number from 0 to 127.
For example, the ASCII code for uppercase M is 77.