How exactly does a computer program

work?
1. The central part of a computer is called CPU (Central Processing Unit). Modern CPUs
include a lot of stuff, but simply explained, CPU is a bunch of microelectronics that
can execute instructions.

2. You can think of CPU as a bunch of Logical transistor gates. A lot of them. These
gates consist of Transistors and other electronic parts that implement very simple
logical operators: AND, OR and NOT. Very simple CPUs used to have thousands of
transistors. To grasp the complexity of modern CPUs, consider that some of them
have over 2.5 billion transistors. As you might have guessed, they're tiny. But here are
some not-so-tiny ones:

(note three connectors - two inputs, one output)

3. Transistors operate on electric currents. This is where your 1s and 0s come from.
Current exists - 1. No current - 0. Logical operations alter these currents. For example,
AND means that the output will have current only if both its inputs have it (1 AND 1
= 1). OR means only one is enough (1 OR 0 = 1). NOT just reverses the existence of
current (NOT 0 = 1).

4. Believe it or not, these three logical operators, when you combine them, are enough to
implement all logic, including arithmetic operations on integers (+, -, /, *), and
consequently pretty much everything else. It's just that you have to have a lot of them
combined together. You can think of it this way: numbers are represented as 1s and 0s
in Binary numeral system, so addition is just a set of logical operations between 1s
and 0s the two numbers consist of. Here's for example, a couple of transistors which
add two bits together. Combine more of those and you can add large numbers.

5. OK, this is CPU and its logic. But where do we get instructions from? Since we know
how operations such as addition are implemented, we can now give them some sort of
code. For example, we can agree that 45 means add two numbers, and 87 means
divide them (of course, we should also specify exactly what). What CPU does is
reads these numbers (code) and executes the corresponding instruction.
6. In modern CPUs, what I just described is called Microcode, and microcode contains
the most basic instructions. Microcode then is used to implement a more complicated
set of instructions, which is called Machine code. Machine code is also numbers, it's
just that the instructions are somewhat more complicated. Just as an imaginary
example, let's say the machine code instruction is 76 2 3 4. It could mean "add
together two numbers (opcode 76) from memory in positions 2 and 3, and write the
result into position 4. Its implementation in microcode contains much simpler, atomic
commands such as "retrieve number from position 2". Then the CPU executes them.
7. Now that I mentioned memory. Memory is easier to understand - it just contains a lot
of these 0s and 1s which can be changed. And it looks like nothing exciting, too:

In almost all existing computer architectures (thanks to the guy named Von
Neumann), the instruction code we discussed above is stored in memory, just like any
other data. The instructions that I mentioned before (76 2 3 4) would also be stored in
memory. To turn on the computer (CPU), you have to point it to some location in

memory with instructions and say - Go! It will read instructions one by one and
execute them in the manner I described above.
8. Of course, since computers understand only electrical current or lack thereof (1s and
0s), all data including those instruction numbers is stored in Binary numeral system.
Binary system is actually quite easy to understand. We're using Decimal system,
because we have 10 fingers. Each number can be one of 10 possible digits: 0, 1, 2, 3,
4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9. There's nothing special about ten. You can imagine some aliens with 8
fingers, could use a numeral system with only eight digits: 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7.

I use Octal (8) numeral system!

You can think of binary as a numeral system which some very unfortunate ET with
only two fingers would use. Here's an example of how to convert from binary to
decimal:

9. Phew! Now we're getting somewhere. But we're not nearly done yet. You see, writing
numbers even in decimal system is very, very inconvenient and error prone. So, the
first thing that appears is
wikipedia.org
Assembly language. Assembly language is just mnemonic representation of machine
code. For example, our favorite instruction 76 2 3 4, could be represented as
something like:
ADD [2], [3] -> [4]

(not real assembly code)

10. The first Assembler (the program that translates assembly language into machine
code) of course, had to be written in pure code (numbers). But it's relatively easy,
because assembly commands map almost 1:1 to machine code.
11. OK, now it's a little better, but assembly language is still way, way too verbose. Even
simple programs, such as read user input, add 1 to it, and print it back contain a lot of
commands in assembly language. It's very low level and lacks higher abstractions.
12. Enter Programming languages. They are much more high level, and you can express
complicated stuff very succinctly compared to assembly languages. You could write
something like that:
R = 2.0
print "Square of circle with radius %f is %f" % (R, 3.14*R*R)
This translates into a lot of commands in assembly language, which is exactly what a
Compiler does. The compiler takes a program in a relatively high abstraction
language like the example above, and converts it into a program in assembly language
(actually, oftentimes directly into machine code, but hey). The very first compiler, of
course, had to be written in assembly language. But once you have your first version
working, you can write future versions of your compiler in the same language it
compiles from. After all, a compiler is just like any other computer program - it
translates input into output.

13. So now you have a compiler. And you can write programs and compile them into
machine code. The end result is an Executable file. Remember when we were talking
about how machine code is just numbers in memory? So you have these numbers on
disk somewhere in a file. To run your program, the computer loads this file in
memory, points the CPU to the beginning of the program and says: Go!
14. The last term you want to know to have a rough understanding of computer
architecture is Operating system. The operating system is basically a program that
starts when your computer starts, and it manages even more complicated concepts
(such as disk, file, your monitor, your keyboard and your mouse, etc.) so that every
program you write doesn't have to implement them over and over again. Instead of
knowing how to talk to a keyboard, for example, a program just asks the operating
system, say, for the last key you pressed, and the operating system takes over details
of communicating with the keyboard (or any other hardware for that matter).

Three most popular desktop operating systems

Mobile operating systems

It is the operating system that introduces such concepts as File and Folder. It is the

operating system that loads your program from the executable file into memory,
points the CPU to the beginning of it and says: Go!

Congratulations! Now you have a rough understanding of computer architecture!