How Does a Computer Run a Python Program?
In order to understand what happens when you’re programming, it helps to have have a mental model of how a computer executes a program.
The computer is assembled from pieces of hardware, including a processor that can execute instructions and do arithmetic, a place to store data such as a hard drive, and various other pieces, such as a screen, a keyboard, an Ethernet controller for connecting to a network, and so on.
To deal with all these pieces, every computer runs some kind of operating system, such as Microsoft Windows, Linux, or macOS. An operating system, or OS, is a program; what makes it special is that it’s the only program on the computer that’s allowed direct access to the hardware. When ...
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