Annon Inglorion

These days, many people work with computers on a daily basis. Many of us own computers, and many of us even perform various degrees of maintenance on them. Despite this, comparatively few people have a solid understanding of how computers actually work. To many, computers work as if by magic. This makes it difficult to understand what capabilities a computer is likely to have, difficult to understand and solve any problems that may occur, and, on a personal note, difficult for me to explain the work I do. In this essay, I propose thinking of computers as performing simple operations on numbers. This is a simple mental model that doesn't require much prior knowledge of computers, but is also accurate enough that it explains many of the behaviors and limitations of computers.

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