Long-Term Memory
The computer isn’t too picky about where instructions come from. Instructions can come from a number of places, including the command line, a file that is downloaded directly into RAM (such as a JavaScript file on a web page), or a file in the computer’s hard drive. We discuss the first two methods later; now we focus on the hard drive.
A computer’s hard drive is long-term memory. Hard drives are the place to put things that you don’t want the computer to forget ever—even if the computer gets turned off. Think of a hard drive as a collection of files. All kinds of files reside on a hard drive. Yours probably has images, presentations, and rich-text documents. Your hard drive also stores files containing instructions. When the ...
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