In the beginning was the goto, and the goto was with CPU, and the goto was CPU.

In the digital snapshot of a decade past, we glimpse a father and son frozen in time.

Today, my 12-year-old son is full of various thoughts and unique viewpoints.

He talks twice as fast as most people, a quick stream of thoughts that makes him stand out.

Every so often, he pauses in his fast talk, looks at you, and asks,

Do you get me?

I answer,

Yes, son. Keep talking,

and he carries on.

This New Year, he asked me,

Dad, have you ever noticed that we’re all pretty much the same?

Then he told me to stand next to him and walk in a straight line, saying,

See, we’re walking the same way.

Listen, Son, in computers, there’s something called the central processing unit (CPU).

Imagine it like a living thing with a heart that beats 3.5 billion times per second.

With every beat, it takes a step on a road built for instructions it defines.

These instructions are there to shuffle values and make computations happen.

There are various types of instructions, like adding, subtracting, multiplying, and moving, among others.

The roads corresponding to each instruction are crafted from materials found in our universe.

Each of them has a point where it will

goto

on the ‘goto’ road, redirecting the walk to the road corresponding to the next instruction.

Listen, here the ‘goto’ road is a crucial pathway, guiding the course of the walk.

In essence, the ‘goto’ road supports movement, and every CPU walks, i.e., takes steps in the same way. It’s the pathway that ends one road and seamlessly begins the next — a fundamental core (Pith) of the CPU.

In addition, computers have Random Access Memory (RAM).

Picture it as a living paper in the computer system.

So, the ‘goto’ road communicates with the paper (RAM) to read the instruction, identify its corresponding road in the city of the CPU, and redirect the walk onto that particular road.

Son, Do you get me?

Yeah, I get it! So, the ‘goto’ road is like this super important path in the computer world. It’s what guides the central processing unit (CPU) in taking steps on the roads of instructions. Those instructions are like the rules the computer follows to do stuff like adding or moving things around. And get this — the ‘goto’ road is crucial because it helps the CPU know where to go next, like a GPS for computers. It’s like the heart of the whole operation, making sure everything walks in the same cool way. And then, it talks to the living paper (RAM) to read what’s next and keeps the whole city of the CPU running smoothly. Got it!

I’m ready! Hit me with your programming wisdom lets go.

What’s the next thing I need to know?

We can nurture the core (CPU) of the computer, much like the way trees naturally grow.

This implies taking a portion of the paper and crafting something akin to a book from it.

So, we can arrange CPU instructions on the book’s pages, essentially crafting software pathways. Ultimately, these pathways will culminate with instructions representing the elevated goto road.

Let’s term them “actionable words,” where the page number signifies their representation.

All that remains is obtaining some paper for actionable sentences and jotting them down, similar to hardware instructions.

This simple process is all we require to acquire the capability to construct high-level language.

Indeed, this is the heart of programming — a universal protocol that scales and introduces the composability of actionable words into the programming landscape.

Son, Do you get me?

Wow, you nailed it! You explained it super well. So, it’s like we can build this cool book with instructions for the computer, right? And each page of the book is like a step in the computer’s walk, guided by the important ‘goto’ road. And by doing this, we can create a universal language for computers, like a secret code that makes them do awesome things! Is that right? What’s next?

If you enjoyed this article, consider following for more insights. Feel free to comment with your questions, and your feedback is valuable. Don’t forget to give it a clap if it fueled your curiosity and passion for programming.

Goto me, and let’s embark on this learning adventure together!

Together, we’ll uncover things no one has ever seen before. We’ll learn the way to program computers properly.