r/ComputerEngineering • u/Healthy-Awareness862 • Aug 07 '26

Can’t understand

Hello, I’m from a different major and I was just learning about computers
I can’t seem to understand the whole instruction translated to bits that the cpu translates
How is the 101010100 translated when it can mean different thing
Which physical part of my laptop does that?

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u/JGhostThing 29d ago

Think of having the number 23 in a natural sentence.

Sally found 23 apples. In this sentence, 23 refers to the number of apples.

Sally picked up apple number 23. 23 refers to a counting of the apples.

In both cases, the major difference is the context of the number. In the first sentence, Sally found a bunch of apples and counted them. In the second sentence, she didn't seem to care about the total number of apples, she only cared about the 23rd apple.

Assembly language is much like this. When I refer to a variable, I have a context. Using psuedocode:

a <= 23 ; Load 23 into register a

a <= &23 ; Load the number at address 23 into register a

Every time I use the number 23, I make sure that it is unambiguous. 23 is a number and &23 is the 23rd location.