When someone says binary
What comes to your mind?
Probably some geeky jerk
Well aren’t those hard to find.
But you see, you will be amazed to know
It isn’t all that geeky
For once you know what it is
You will find it very easy.
Humans have ten fingers on their hands
Well most have ten anyway
And we use these to count and add
Since our very first day.
And thus we base everything on this ten,
That toy, the candy, the pencil and that apple.
For us, this may seem all normal
But in geek, this in fact is called decimal.
Now imagine for a moment
That we had not ten fingers but only two
Now isn’t that a dreadful thought
Thankfully its just hypothetical, it isn’t true.
Lets start by checking
How exactly does decimal work
Don’t worry I will do the talking
For now, I am your Captain Kirk.
For since most of us can remember
We count using the digits 0 to 9
All the numbers even the biggest of them all
Are nothing but 0-9 strung in a twine.
Now lets say we didn’t have 0-9,
And just had 0 and 1 instead
Would we be able to count and add
And write those big big numbers as said?
Now what if I said we could,
I am sure you wouldn’t believe me now
But by the end of this small trip,
Most of you would say, wow.
Lets try counting in the decimal
We go 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 right?
What do we do after 9?
Come on, the answer is within your sight.
Ok let me make that easier for you
By writing it as 00 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09
How now do we proceed after 09?
I see that you are slowly getting the sign.
We make the first 0 as a 1,
And thereon proceed with the same simple steps
And this way we reach 19 and 20 and the 87
So on till we reach I dunno, a gazillion.
Having this in our pockets
Lets apply the same to write the binary 00 and 01,
What can we write after this,
Could it be a 10 11?
Well yes as one would figure, and you are right there,
And this is exactly how we count in binary
We could reach 1000 1111 1110101 and so on
Ah well now there is nothing else to worry.
Can we represent the same number
In both decimal and binary digit?
Well yes surely we can
And I will just go over the way to do it.
Lets take a number say 10 in decimal,
To reach 10, we counted the 11th number from 0.
Doing the same in binary, we go from 00 01 10 11 100
All the way to 101 110 111 1000 1001 1010.
And there you go, what did we just do,
Did we just count in binary? Oh I think we just did
Didn’t I promise at the very beginning that we would,
I did deliver on that indeed.
So now, having that in your arsenal,
I am sure you can hold your head up high,
And carry within yourself the knowledge of the bits and bytes,
Which no one can steal from you until the computers die.
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