The end result of computer programming is a program. A program is made of object files. Object files are composed of code and data sections. The end result is a binary put together by a linker. At least that’s how programs used to be made.
Fundamental data structures build upon each other; the bit, the byte, the array, the linked list, the hash table. Through these combinations the fantastic structures of modern day programs and operating systems can be created; but the end result is still a number. A specific set of bits arranged in a way such that the bits of that number can be interpreted by a special machine, but a number nonetheless.
Each program is of a particular sort of integer, one which, out of the space of all possible integers that length, happens to interpret in. way to produce a direction of reality; a specific time such that it is in control of space and it guides it. This is what the programmer is intending the program do to and this number is an exact representation of it. No more, no less.
Get 1 bit wrong in that number and the program could cease to work correctly. Given that we have control over all of the bits in this number, getting them arranged in the correct order is quite an accomplishment, but of course, we are using the computer as a tool to help with this process. It is tireless, it doesn’t make mistakes. It can deal with the magnitude of bits composing your program because they are it’s native tongue. We only speak in abstract about the bits of the machine. Few work directly with them, many of our minds are not capable of such things, especially in such magnitude.
To design a computer, one has to start and think at the bit level, at first. The underlying bit is what the machine works with; our abstractions simply organize them together in such a way that we can understand them, but then, we aren’t talking about the bits themselves, we are talking about higher units of comprehension, whatever level that may be.
To think in bits requires a bit of a stretch. They are them smallest units of information available. Information is defined as change, or the measured change of some thing. Without change there can be no information, and without time, there can be no change. This would make time and information inseparable. Good thing we have time, or this essay would stop right here.