How computers work

So Ryan, to build up an idea of the kernel, let's look at this:
You have a processor. The processor can give outputs for certain inputs. The inputs that the processor takes are commands called instructions. The processor gives an output for an instruction sent to it, thus executing (running) the instruction.
The truly remarkable thing about a processor is that it executes code written in terms of these instructions without having these instructions defined elsewhere. How does it know what a command means if it's not defined elsewhere? A processor is an arrangement of electrical components that processes these instructions when it goes across the circuit. It was designed that way. In a sense, you can think of arranging electrical components as a type of programming! It is an extremely cleaver piece of electrical engineering.
A processor is actually an abstraction layer. Before the processor, if you had an electrical task that you wanted completed, your made a "program" to accomplish the task by arranging electrical components in a certain way to do that task, and the resultant circuit could only do that task. Designing that circuit is called electrical engineering.
That was hard. So they made a circuit capable of accomplishing basic tasks, and reading the tasks that it is to do off some kind of memory.
Armed with that, you can just define your task in those tasks, and not have to design a new circuit every time. Programming for a processor was born.
Now you can write programs that run on a processor.
Skip ahead to the presonal computer with hard