That's too easy. That can apply to anything. Is using a calculator programming when you add and subtract? No, it was told what 1, +, and 2 was. Is "telling" a computer what a 1 is and a 2 is, is that programming? Yes, most certainly. CPU's don't understand anything besides binary. One could say such an ability to use logical operations are high-level (software) operations and not a fundamental at a low-level (hardware) level. Higher level languages can also "add" strings together which is what we call concatenation which is also done by a plus sign. The + and * means anything, they are just symbols programmed by programmers.

It's like if I showed you 2 fingers, one finger on each hand. You see "2" fingers in your mind, but you have to be taught that's a 1 and that's a 1 (the other fingers we don't see don't matter) and that equals 2 and that's how we see it in computers being everyday users. Not to be confused with true or false logic. Using the example of early computers using vacuum tubes, paper would have holes in them and the vacuum tubes were sensitive to light and wherever a hole was located it designated a "1". 0's didn't matter in calculating anything. A 0 can be thought of as a "ignore spot" and then it passes over to the next bit (and being a next spot in the base 10 system), possibly being a 1, and add the leftover 1's to that and there's your answer. If it makes programming sound simple yet overly-simplified, that's because it is but it does get fun when you learn how to manipulate all this.

Long story short, accumulators are used within a processor to do arithmetic, it isn't a function of the entire CPU (there used to be a special thing known as a co-processor that did this externally from the CPU). Commands like ADD and SUB store these values in these "special" registers. This of course applies to (CISC) mostly x86 based processors, not (RISC) PowerPC, ARM, etc. based processors. There are 4 common registers (or the general purpose registers) known as AX, BX, CX, and DX. AX I believe is the main one used for arithmetic and CX is the counter to move up and down.


Programming hardware is different than "programming" software. Computers are meant to be open and are not meant to be limited by software. True programmers can tweak and hack hardware, not manipulate software based on specifications set by others or else that's called developing, not programming. How can you program on a computer that you don't even know exists? It even took C++ to make Java. Here's the kicker, that means that the creators of Java were C++ programmers. Now what's a programming language?