What are programs that tell the computer what to do?

Answer 1

All programs tell the computer what to do, that is the primary purpose of programs.

The program (more accurately -set- of programs) which is the mother of all programs & gives the user direct control over the computer is called the "operating system"

Answer 2

Programs are simply a sequence of instructions and their operands. Some of those operands may refer to offsets within the program's data segment (the program stack) or they may be literal values. Every CPU has an instruction set that is largely unique to that type of CPU, where each instruction can be called with the appropriate binary sequence. The instruction itself determines if the binary sequence that follows the instruction code is an operand or operands for that instruction, and loads them accordingly. The instruction is then executed and the next instruction loaded. Sometimes the instruction will be a jump instruction and the operand will tell the CPU where to load the next instruction from, as an offset from the address of the first instruction. The exact sequence of instructions and their operands ultimately determines what the computer does. All instructions are incredibly simple, and do simple things such loading operands into CPU registers, comparing registers, performing simple arithmetic and so on. While each instruction does very little, they are executed with such speed that the computer can perform a surprising amount of work in a very short time. In a multi-processing environment, the CPU can switch between tasks at any time by saving the current state of the registers. This is controlled by the operating system, such that each task is allocated a short portion of CPU time (a time-slice) the length of which is dependant upon that task's priority. High-priority tasks get more CPU time than low-priority tasks. Although the CPU can only execute one instruction from one program at a time, the speed of execution combined with task-switching gives the impression several programs are running simultaneously even though that is clearly not possible. However, with multi-core CPUs, two or more programs really can run simultaneously, albeit for the duration of their individual time-slices. Programs can also be assigned affinity to any core or cores, thus freeing any remaining cores for other tasks.

Answer 3

A program is anything that tells the computer what to do. Even if you're not using binary, the compiler converts it to binary for the computer to understand.

Answer 4

Among programs which do that are also the drivers that give instructions to computers on how to work with specific hardware.

Answer 5

it is called an operating system(OS) like windows, Linux , mac

They all do. Fundamentally, all OS are just a series of instructions for your computer.

Answer 6

The Operating System (OS) is what makes the PC run as it does, and executes spacific commands depending on your inputs, and other programs that run on that (OS).