What is Binary Code?
Binary code is a coding system that uses the binary digits 0 and 1 to signify or represent a digit, letter, or other character in a an electronic device such as a computer. It is not comprised of any other digit or value. I know, weird right? How is it that you can manage to make a whole system that only uses and has two values? Let me break it down for you a bit more.
Once an exponent of 10 is reached in binary code, a new digit is added to the left of the current digit. Each new value has to have a value ten times greater than the digit to its right. Counting upwards in binary works in a pattern like this:
0, 1, 10, 11, 100, 101, 110, 111, 1000
A single binary digit is called a “bit”. What binary does is it assigns a pattern of bits to each character, number, or etc. Each digit of binary has only two values compared to the decimal system’s ten values. Each digit represents an increasing power of two, rather than an increasing power of ten.
Reading Binary
There are many different ways to read and use binary. And there are two binary coding systems you can use to read and write in binary. One way, which is through the binary-coded decimal, is by multiplying each binary digit by two to the power of its place number. Digits are always counted from left to right, the number farthest on the right being zero. You add all the results together and there goes your answer, simple as that!
Another way is to read a binary-coded decimal system is by using slot value. You would read from right to left and with each slot, the values are doubled. Each value ends up multiplying, i.e. 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, and so forth. After, you would take the values of the ones and add those together.
The second coding system is called ASCII code. It uses a 7-bit binary code to represent text and punctuation marks within computers and other devices. Each letter or symbol is assigned a number from 0 to 127. Gnarly, right? So now you can know how to spell out any word or sentence you so desire to!
My name (Aisatou) in binary would be as written below. Fun fact: uppercase and lowercase letters have their own special binary numbers, but also, the first four digits are the same for all uppercase letters as they are with all lowercase letters.
01000001 01101001 01110011 01100001 01110100 011101111 01110101
It’s interesting how two numbers can have so much meaning just based on placement, and it’s amazing how much value they hold. When I first read up on and watched videos on binary, I felt pretty much like I was trying to understand the deep matrix. Now, after going through it and practicing it on my own, I feel so much more confident about reading and writing it on my own, and I hope this article was able to help you in the same way.
Now go out there and kill it! And remember, there are only 10 types of people in this world, those who understand binary, and those who don’t.
