So say you have notepad open and you drag any file into it, you get a bunch of symbolised code? displayed, what exactly it this jumble of symbols, you also usually get some legible higher level code(c++ etc) like you will recognize some API function and the like?

Are these symbols machine code, but the machine code must get turned to binary at some point...why do we need machine code, it is electrity after all, you can only send a pulse of ecel. or you can't.

I thought it was only binary 0 or 1 that is the final data model to work with, in other words electricity is either send or it is not(morse code) building up patterns to produce the image on the screen.