Python For Kids (Part 16: "The Universal Language")

For a complete table of contents of all the lessons please click below as it will give you a brief of each lesson in addition to the topics it will cover. https://github.com/mytechnotalent/Python-For-Kids

Today we are not going to do any coding as we are going to talk about a very special language that is common to each and everyone of us.

There is, "The Universal Language", that our computers speak no matter where our computer lives on planet earth. That language is so very basic that it literally only has two numbers in it which are 0 and 1.

When we talk to our friends we use words and words have meanings. If you say 'hello Anna' or 'hi Jim' to either Anna or Jim, they understand that you are greeting them. Anna or Jim hears and interprets your words and then has an understanding of what you are saying.

Our computers do not understand letters or words in the way that we understand letters or words. Our computers instead understand only two things at its core which are off or on.

Let us think about a light switch. It can only be in one of two positions.

As we can see it is either off or on and that is it. Our little computer only understands these two values. These two values when combined together with an unlimited amount of combinations literally can do anything like play a song or show a movie or say hi to you.

The easiest way to think about this is our little computer is either sleeping or waking up at such a speed that we as people can't see with our own eyes.

When we say the word hello we see that it has five letters which are h e l l o. When we say hello to our computer it breaks it down like this.

The computer first sees an h which it does not understand at all. So our little computer scratches its head and looks up in it's own little dictionary that it carries around and sees that h is actually 01101000.

Now we are scratching our head saying what is 01101000? I know at this point this may be very confusing however I just want you to take the time and think about this for a second.

Our computer does not have a dictionary like we have. It has what is called an ascii table.

An ascii table is nothing more than a little book that our computer looks at when you type things to it. In our case it looks up what h is like this.

01101000 h Lowercase h

It then says, 'oh cool', I see the person is saying h to me.

Our computer is excited because it now understands a bit so it continues on to see what other letters you just told it so it looks up the e l l o in excitement like this!

01100101 e Lowercase e
01101100 l Lowercase l
01101100 l Lowercase l
01101111 o Lowercase o

It is so happy at this point because it now understands what you just said! Just like your friend Anna or Jim who was happy to hear you say hello our computer is also very happy that you were nice enough to say hello as well!

I know this is a lot to think about so there will be no homework today. I would rather you just take the time and re-read this lesson a few times until it makes sense to you.

Today you have taken the first step of learning, "The Universal Language". This power will allow you to do all sorts of amazing things like create robots or anything else you can dream of!

Keep at it and if you are confused please ask a question in the main repo on GitHub by clicking on issues. These steps are illustrated in lesson 11 so we are always here to help you on your journey!

In our next lesson we are going to talk about an intro to numbers and how we use them and our little computer uses them.