Machine language is the programming language the computer understands; its native tongue. Machine language instructions are written with binary numbers, 0 and 1. The 0 and 1 represent electrical off and on states. All other programming languages must be compiled or translated into binary code to be recognized and used by the central processing unit (CPU). Machine language, therefore, is the lowest level computer language, executable without prior software translation.

Machine language instructions correspond to the instruction set of a particular hardware architecture and are machine dependent. Different computers use different machine languages, but every machine language includes instructions for basic operations such as addition and subtraction. The instructions are patterns of 0s and 1s in lengths of 16, 24, 32, or 64 bits (binary digits). Each instruction has two parts: an operator and an operand. The operator is the first few bits of the instruction. It specifies the operation...