A computer is a device that accepts information (in the form of digitalized data) and manipulates it for some result based on a program or sequence of instructions on how the data is to be processed.Complex computers also include the means for storing data (including the program,which is also a form of data) for some necessary duration.A program may be invariable and built into the computer (and called logic circuitry as it is on microprocessors) or different programs may be provided to the computer (loaded into its storage and then started by an administrator or user).Today's computers have both kinds of programming.
Modern computers inherently follow the ideas of the stored program laid out by John von Neumann in 1945.Essentially,the program is read by the computer one instruction at a time,an operation is performed,and the computer then reads in the next instruction,and so on.Recently,computers and programs have been devised that allow multiple programs (and computers) to work on the same problem at the same time in parallel.With the advent of the Internet and higher bandwidth data transmission,programs and data that are part of the same overall project can be distributed over a network and embody the Sun Microsystems slogan:"The network is the computer."