Bits and Binary
You might have seen bits or binary or 01100010 01101001 01101110 01100001 01110010 01111001 before and got a little intimidated... but now it's time to double down and learn what bits are. In the process of learning bits, you will learn binary. Once you learn binary, you're a computer. Ipso facto, this is your last chance to stop before becoming a computer.
Binary Basics
I'm going to not make my own stuff here and recommend that you use this tutorial, it is fantastic and SparkFun is a great company.
Work through this tutorial: https://learn.sparkfun.com/tutorials/binary
Once you are done with that you're ready for what comes next. You definitely don't need to memorize binary/ASCII (or any other) conversions, just use a cheatsheet like this one: Character Conversion Cheatsheet.
Remember, you don't need to memorize any of this stuff. If you are at a computer, you have access to the resources you need to just look it up every time.
Assignment
- What is ASCII?
- What is binary?
- How many bits are used for each character in ASCII?
- "01101000 01100101 01101100 01101100 01101111 00100001" is in binary. Convert it back to ASCII. Do it by hand using the chart.