binary

Intermediate 💻 Tech / IT

Definition

A base-2 number system that reduces all of digital existence to 1s and 0s—because early computer engineers apparently couldn't be bothered to count higher. It's the mathematical bedrock upon which literally every computation, program, and cat video your device processes is built. Your executable files are just binary: glorified sequences of these two digits being flipped at ungodly speeds.

Example Usage

The engineer compiled the source code into a binary so the CPU could actually execute the instructions.

Source: Merriam-Webster via Free Dictionary API, common computing terminology

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