Question

I was wondering if someone could explain ASCII to me?

Answer 1

Think about it as a map from character input to a hexadecimal integer representation over a small interval. Stretching a bit the definition, think about it as a function, that receives as input a keyboard hit and returns a number (there are other special encodings, and this is a simplistic model, but I hope that it will get the message across).

Answer 2

That makes sense thanks! How does it affect how people code though?

Answer 3

I don't know if Python allows access to this level of coding(I think it's abstracted away), but in C you can use it all the time, so you can catch which of the keys had been pressed. Think about a FPS game where you push WSAD to move. In order to recognize that you pushed W, there should be some encoding of the keyboard stroke. There are a lot of different uses too.
What I meant is that, even though some higher level languages may have a function like UpArrowPressed(), it generally is, under the hood, using ASCII.

Answer 4

http://www.asciitable.com/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ASCII
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ASCII_art
http://www.asciiworld.com/index.html

Answer 5

http://1lineart.kulaone.com/
http://www.ascii-art.de/info/