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The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
I think there should be a paragraph on digital computers in relation to the fact that currently all what we currently call digital computers are in fact analog computers simulating a digital computer. Too many people think they are actually digital rather than analog with tolerances to infer a digital behaviour. Suggested paragraph...
"While often referred to as 'digital computers,' modern computing devices are, in reality, analog computers that simulate digital behavior. These devices rely on analog components, such as transistors and electrical signals, to process information. By carefully controlling the tolerances and thresholds of these analog components, engineers can create the illusion of digital behavior, where discrete binary values (0s and 1s) are processed and manipulated. However, it's essential to recognize that this digital behavior is an abstraction, built upon the underlying analog nature of the physical components." 2405:6E00:2229:7BB:112A:78DC:C83D:41C4 (talk) 15:16, 20 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Actually explaining misnomers is very educational and should be in every article. Wikipedia is supposed to be all factual, and so many people grow up not realizing facts because of such and wikipedia is becoming more and more the source of truth for a lot of people.
No, the point is to tell you what is the case, and only what is pertinent. Usually that does not require explicitly ruling out everything that is not the case or misconceptions not potentially implied from a plain reading of the text. You think a distinction one could identify is interesting, but that does not deserve to be extrapolated out to a primary point of focus for readers because you've decided to confuse yourself on purpose about it. Remsense ‥ 论17:05, 21 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
You probably think ROM is not random access memory. Its worth noting that Buchholz himself acknowledged the potential for confusion between the terms "random access" and "read/write," but the terminology had already become widespread by the time he expressed his concerns.
It's not a misnomer. Digital computers are digital, they work by digital electronics.
Digital electronicsis fundamentally analogue. Aspects such as signal noise margins, output impedance, fanout and (into the time domain) gate delay are all analogue and crucial to good design of their circuits. But once these low-level circuits are designed, they can be assembled into larger architectures with little thought as to their analogue behaviour, or at least by codifying this as some basic rules to follow. From that point on, they can be treated as digital functional blocks, without having to consider the underlying analogue implementation.
Once we're into computers, then we're even further abstracted. We no longer see signal levels or logic families, we're reduced purely to a 'bit' or 'word', because we'd never get anywhere otherwise. Andy Dingley (talk) 20:22, 21 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Your observation that the physical world is unideal and noisy is not new, interesting, or useful here. You are trying to shove a fixation of yours where it doesn't belong, into a place where everyone already understands it but does not mention it because it doesn't matter. That's why we say what sources do in proportion to how often they say it. Remsense ‥ 论06:39, 22 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
CMOS inverter The basic building block of any digital computer is the logic gate. The vast majority of these are nowadays made using FETs, which are connected in such a way that they operate either in cutoff mode or saturation mode - the FET either conducts, or it doesn't, and so it acts like a switch - either "off" or "on", usually represented by the binary values 0 and 1. Between these two modes, FETs also have a linear mode within which it is purely analogue and can amplify a signal. The same applies to BJTs, which were used to construct the majority of logic gates until the 1970s/1980s. It is perfectly possible to construct a logic gate using relays; one feature of the relay is that there is no linear mode - the output is either "off" or "on", there is nothing in between. Even if a slowly-increasing input is applied, at some point the output of the relay will snap instantaneously from one state to the other, without any graduation. Logic gates that use either FETs or BJTs must necessarily pass through the linear region when the transistor is changing state, but with careful design, this period is extremely short. One reason that CMOS devices get hot is that when a pair of FETs (see diagram of a CMOS inverter) is changing state, the power rail (Vdd) is briefly short-circuited to ground (Vss) whilst the two FETs are conducting simultaneously.
As an aside, but on a related matter: just over 46 years ago, there was an article in Everyday Electronics magazine[1] showing how to construct a small AM radio receiver that used only two semiconductor devices: a Mullard OA91 germanium diode used as a detector, and a CD4001B integrated circuit, a device that contained four two-input NOR gates. In the finished radio, one NOR gate was unused (and tied to Vss), and the other three were wired as inverters and connected (basically, by feeding the output back to the input through a resistor) in such a fashion that they operated in linear mode, and functioned as amplifiers. So, it can be said that CMOS logic gates are analogue devices, but when used in a digital computer, the fact that the inputs will be at either of the two supply voltages means that the output will also be at one of these voltages.
I should point out that all digital computers emply a clock signal, which is not just used for synchronisation, it is also used to verify the validity of logic levels. In its simplest form, when the clock is in one state, one set of data wires is stable and the other is in an indeterminate state, during which time these will be conditioned from the first set; and when the clock line changes to its other state, the second set then become stable and the first set will become indeterminate and are then conditioned from the second set. By checking the clock state, you can find which data wires are stable - and it will be found that all of these will be at one or the other of the two supply voltages. None will be at an intermediate voltage: their signals are not analogue, but digital. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 21:28, 22 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Next you will likely say digital computers can only be binary? Digital does not mean binary actually which is a fact. Yet the article is focusing on the fact that most digital computers are binary based. They can be but not necessarily are. But all are analog because analog is also digital. 2405:6E00:223C:91A:E5AD:1513:A920:7051 (talk) 08:09, 17 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
References
^Penfold, R.A. (October 1978). Bennett, Fred E. (ed.). "MW LW Radio". Everyday Electronics. Vol. 7, no. 14. London: IPC Magazines. pp. 740–4.
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
Did you miss the standard disambiguation page hatnote? Or what, what are you asking? The other article as presently written isn't confusing as to what its subject is. However, it does mangle the use–mention distinction pretty badly, so that should be fixed. Remsense ‥ 论11:24, 13 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I’ve heard some debates over this term from more pedantic folks. Some argue that the word machine only applies to feats of mechanical engineering. Apple discourages the use of machine for its products, encouraging the word device instead.
I’m all for descriptivism, but I wonder if those who prefer a prescriptivist perspective would disagree with calling a fully solid state computer (bonus points if it’s fanless and has minimal/no switches on the unit itself, i.e. many microcontroller boards) a machine.
The slightly broader sense of machine not limited to mechanical devices is as old as the narrower sense—just to cover my base of etymological fallacy—and more concretely is pretty unproblematic and universally understood as a result. I would have to conjecture that any objection to its use as such is primarily aesthetic, not lexical. Remsense ‥ 论16:44, 19 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I am wondering if 'the first computer programmer' should be added to this article, either as a standalone sub-section in History or as part of the Charles Babbage entry?
See the Ada Lovelace Wikipedia article that reads:
"In 1953, more than a century after her death, Ada Lovelace's notes on Babbage's Analytical Engine were republished as an appendix to B. V. Bowden's Faster than Thought: A Symposium on Digital Computing Machines.[72] The engine has now been recognised as an early model for a computer and her notes as a description of a computer and software.[67]"
"Ada saw something that Babbage in some sense failed to see. In Babbage's world his engines were bound by number...What Lovelace saw...was that number could represent entities other than quantity. So once you had a machine for manipulating numbers, if those numbers represented other things, letters, musical notes, then the machine could manipulate symbols of which number was one instance, according to rules. It is this fundamental transition from a machine which is a number cruncher to a machine for manipulating symbols according to rules that is the fundamental transition from calculation to computation—to general-purpose computation—and looking back from the present high ground of modern computing, if we are looking and sifting history for that transition, then that transition was made explicitly by Ada in that 1843 paper." Breezy1111111 (talk) 13:14, 14 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]
level-2 vital article is rated B-class on Wikipedia's content assessment scale.
The redirect Uses of computer has been listed at redirects for discussion to determine whether its use and function meets the redirect guidelines. Readers of this page are welcome to comment on this redirect at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2026 April 30 § Uses of computer until a consensus is reached. consarn (talck) (contirbuton s) 11:52, 30 April 2026 (UTC)