Have you seen the movie called Matrix?

All those green numbers in that movie that are falling like rain is machine code, binary code. A person who can programme in machine code is the ultimate programmer/hacker. There is no higher person than them.

Think of algorithms as mathematical equations - because that is what they are.

Every time you press a key on your computer there is a program that is waiting for an input from your keyboard. The computer then has to decide what to do with that input. This only takes a fraction of a second (barring the spinning wheel syndrome of course, lol !)

So when you press the letter 'a' the computer has to determine not just that that letter has been pressed but that it has to be placed on a certain part of your computer screen (which is divided into pixels - basically small dots) - there are thousands of calculations involved in that simple action.

Are you with me so far? You haven't fallen asleep?

So every action on a computer is then put through a program which determines what happens next.

So when you click on my 'green' like button (please do, don't let me stop you) there will be an algorithm which will tell your computer what to do and to tell the internet site what to do.

There will be an algorithm that says when the 'green' button is pressed, increase the onboard screen counter by one. Then it will say keep a tally of this person's counter and we will keep score. If the likes go above ten we will give this person 100 points which will be added their ranking score. In programmes there are a lot of 'if', 'then' and 'else' statements. 'If' he does this, 'then' do this, or 'else' do this - options galore.

Also if someone comments on this person's site and they have more than 25 words in their comment, we will give that person 25 points and the post writer 25 points. If the post writer likes that person's comment we will add another 25 points to each of their scores. If there are more likes for this page than comments we may reduce the points, so on and so on. These are the calculations algorithms perform in a nutshell. Google does the same thing only they are much more complex calculations.

Just one click on your computer and all these parameters must be met. But all this is done in the blink of an eye.

Things will start to click after the next couple of pages. (Pun intended)

Coming up next, computer's have not changed...