An algorithm that is optimal for a particular hardware platform
may not be optimal on another.
Algorithms are typically expressed in a form that can be easily understood by a human being. For example,
the algorithm given earlier to compute the GCD of two numbers was written using the English language so that
it would be easy for you to understand.
Even though you may understand more than one language, the only language that a computer understands
is machine language. Machine language is a system of codes that the computer is designed to interpret. Each
word in machine language represents a simple action that can be performed by the computer. For example the
machine language instruction ???add??? instructs the computer to add together two numbers. (In Chap. 3 on
Computer Organization, we will explain machine language in much more detail.) The set of instructions that,
when executed by a computer, executes the steps of an algorithm is called a program.
It is difficult for humans to work directly with machine language. Machine instruction words consist of
rows of ones and zeros, typically 8, 16, 32, or 64 bits long, and sometimes varying in length. Since people have
difficulty manipulating these strange codes directly, computer languages have been developed to ease the
process of converting an algorithm into a form that the computer can act upon.
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