computer's hardware understand it's base code in the first place?

It's hard to explain this to someone who's had little experience with digital logic circuits. To fully understand this, you need to read up on logic gates, boolean algebra, CPU and bus architecture.

I'll try to keep it simple. The base language of a computer is machine code. The part of the computer that actually "understands" and executes machine code is the CPU.

Machine codes consist of numbers: opcodes and arguments. For example "254" is a x86 instruction meaning "decrease by 1".

The CPU itself consists of a complex network of logic gates (basic digital devices that combine and manipulate bits of data). When the CPU reads an opcode of 254, it sees it as a binary bit-pattern: 11111110. Each of those bits is sent down its own wire (bus) into a logic-gate network (instruction decoder) which is connected in such a way that an input of 254 would activate the "decrease by 1" mechanism; an input of, say, 14 would activate the "multiply by" mechanism, etc.

In short, the CPU is hardwired to respond to specific patterns of bits which we call machine code. If you ever take a digital circuit course, you will likely build a basic 4-bit CPU for your final project.






________________
turbulence-training-review