This is basically a study in layers of abstraction.

At the very fundamental layer you just have a semi-conductor… Special sand that can either allow electricity to pass, or block electricity…

Then when you arrange multiple of these semi conductors in special ways, you get logic gates.

When you arrange the logic gates in special ways you can make more complex operations that can essentially do math with the electric signals.

Then you introduce even more of there bits to be able to perform many different instructions, and some form of memory that can store instructions and execute then in sequence.

With the right set of instructions you now have what is know as a “Turing machine”. Essentially a super basic computer that understands machine code.

You extend the list of instructions and, and you arrive at Assembly.

Then you decide to make a simpler more human readable language and write the assembly to translate this language to Assembly, this is basically C with a compiler.

Then you start building languages with higher and higher levels of abstraction to make them easier for humans to express their intentions with.

If you want to start at the very bottom layer and try to build some of those abstraction layers yourself to understand what’s going on. I can warmly recommend trying out https://www.nandgame.com/