Computer world Part 1

Hello all,
Today is day one of many where i start to learn and try to understand the world of computer science, although I have a full time job in the US Navy. I want to switch one day over to working in the Software development field and being the best at it at all costs. The book I have been told to read and understand and read is Introduction to Java programming 9th ed by Y Daniel Liang.  Today I wanted to start off with the basic building blocks  as a building block and will break each item into a series or posts.I will be building upon  these each day so if you have any questions let me know in the comments. Todays topics are:
1. what is a computer you ask?
2. What is a  program and what does it consist of?
and lastly final thoughts and ideas to help those like me to better understand what the material is and to break it down to the best of my ability.


Computers!!!!
In today's world computers are the epitome of our world and they are only getting bigger and smarter. The basic idea of a computer is that it is a device whether big or small that stores and processes data, it has such things as hardware and software. Now you may be asking yourself what is hardware and software, well have no fear jayson is here to explain! ( Hardware is the physical things you see in the computer that make it run) { Software is the program or invisible program that tells the hardware what its job is}.and these things combined and running properly make a computer program.

A Computer is broken down as such in hardware:

CPU: is the basic builder block it is the central processing unit, which is the brains of the operation where it gets instruction from the memory and does what it says.

Memory:

well this may look confusing at first but know this, its just like looking at a light switch, what I mean by that is it is the same concept in which they both have on and off electrical states also known as 0 and 1, when turning off a light or on you will have flipped a 0 or a 1 to either connect the circuit or break it. Cool huh?? These 0 and 1 are interpreted into things called {bits = binary digits}. data and other such things are stored in the memory as a group of bits or bytes. ASCII is the basic understanding of these 0 and 1 for example 3 woudl look like this= 01001010. Now a byte is just the beginning of this there are way bigger storage areas that are randomly stored. This is called the {RAM= have you heard of this??? It stands for Random Access Memory}

Bytes are measured in different storage capacities such as in order like a set{bytes, kilobytes, megabytes, gigabytes and terabytes. Each of these have a specific # of bytes.
a KILObyte is 1024 bytes/ MEGAbyte is 1048576 bytes. WOW thats a lot to byte off!!!

Storage Devices:
I should say all computers in todays world, all have some sort of storage device, aka space to put files and pics and movies and games and music. This could be a external hard drive yo buy from Best Buy or it coudl be using the Hard drive that comes on your computer internally. Or when your on the move it could be a USB drive.

Input or Output devices:
This is simple and although every computer has one there all different. Now what do I mean by that I mean things such as for input a mouse, Keyboard or a game controller. A output device could be things such as a a computer monitor or a cool 55 in TV screen you got from your birthday.  INPUT just means something that is being taken in and OUTPUT is something displaying what you have taken in. I promise if that doesnt stick I will break it down further later, just hold fast.

Communication devices:
This just means how we get data from one area to another. I good example of this is, right now your reading this which had to come from the internet, in order to get to the internet you had to use a communication device, although your computer did it behind the scenes and you never physically had to do anything it happened. A communication Device is a {modem or DSL or WIFI using a NIC or Network Interface Card} to connect to your local service provider that you or someone pays to have the internet. Most people such as myself only use a NIC but is you were at a University or reading this from a college it woudl most likely be running using a {LAN or Local Area Network}.

OVERALL:
These things are just the beginning of what a computer is and in the next post I will be discussing what a computer program is, an OS im going to build a basic Java Program and how to run it and then finally I will talk about a GUI. Thanks for reading and if you like what your reading send me an email or comment on what I can do better or improve upon. Feedback is always important.