Discovery

While researching things for my project, I found several things I didn't know before I started the project. The first thing I didn't know is that a computer can be almost anything. According to Wikipedia, "A computer does not need to be electronic, nor even have a processor, nor RAM, nor even a hard disk. While popular usage of the word "computer" is synonymous with a personal electronic computer, the modern definition of a computer is literally "A device that computes, especially a programmable [usually] electronic machine that performs high-speed mathematical or logical operations or that assembles, stores, correlates, or otherwise processes information". Any device which processes information qualifies as a computer, especially if the processing is purposeful." In other words, a computer doesn't have to be, well, a computer. A computer is "a device that computes". Meaning, a computer could be a calculator, a cell phone, or even a person.

A second thing I didn't know about computers is that computers can be made out of anything. Wikipedia says that "Historically, computers evolved from mechanical computers and eventually from vacuum tubes to transistors. However, conceptually computational systems as flexible as a personal computer can be built out of almost anything. For example, a computer can be made out of billiard balls (billiard ball computer); an oft-quoted example. More realistically, modern computers are made out of transistors made of photolithographed semiconductors. There is active research to make computers out of many promising new types of technology, such as optical computers, DNA computers, neural computers, and quantum computers. Most computers are universal, and are able to calculate any computable function, and are limited only by their memory capacity and operating speed. However different designs of computers can give very different performance for particular problems; for example quantum computers can potentially break some modern encryption algorithms (by quantum factoring) very quickly." 


The third thing I didn't know about computers is that some languages are easier for a computer to write. Wikipedia says, "though considerably easier than in machine language, writing long programs in assembly language is often difficult and is also error prone. Therefore, most practical programs are written in more abstract high-level programming languages that are able to express the needs of the programmer more conveniently (and thereby help reduce programmer error). High level languages are usually "compiled" into machine language (or sometimes into assembly language and then into machine language) using another computer program called a compiler. High level languages are less related to the workings of the target computer than assembly language, and more related to the language and structure of the problem(s) to be solved by the final program. It is therefore often possible to use different compilers to translate the same high level language program into the machine language of many different types of computer. This is part of the means by which software like video games may be made available for different computer architectures such as personal computers and various video game consoles."