Data, Data types and representation inside a digital computer

Have you ever wondered how your favourite cricket score update flashes on screen? Behind the scenes, it’s all built on tiny pulses of electricity—zeros and ones. This introduction will show you how those bits become meaningful information and set the stage for everything we’ll explore next. Although the concepts mentioned here will be more aligned towards Python, you will find that an understanding of these concepts in this section will improve your understanding of principles used by almost every other computer language.

What’s Coming Up?

In the following pages, we’ll journey from the tiniest units of data to the way you’ll handle them in Python:

• Data Representation
  • Bits and bytes
  • Character sets
  • ASCII character set
  • UTF-8 and why it’s preferred
  • Internal representation of data
  • Non-printing characters (CR, LF and CRLF)
  • Special characters
• Input & Output: ways data enters and exits your computer
• Serial vs Parallel Transmission: one lane or many?
• Storage Evolution: from punched cards in old Delhi to cloud servers around the world
• CLI vs GUI: why text prompts once ruled and visuals now delight
• Block Diagram of the Computer: meet the parts that make it all tick
• Arithmetic in Hardware: how chips add, subtract, multiply and divide
• Logic Gates: the “ANDs” and “ORs” you learned at school, now inside silicon
• Control Structures: the loops and decisions that guide every programme
• Next Steps in Python: how you’ll use code to bring these concepts to life

Ready to decode the magic? Let’s dive in and see how Python helps you speak a language the computers understand.