My understanding is that it has always been to be taken figuratively. Obviously, you won't explain this to (almost) any 5 year old. Mostly, because they will mi

My understanding is that it has always been to be taken figuratively. Obviously, you won't explain this to (almost) any 5 year old. Mostly, because they will miss all the background. (Hey, what's a program at all, not to mention processors or virtual machines having virtual processors. BTW, what the heck is virtual?) Which you could explain, but half way through you'd loose their interest because their attention span is only so long. Other than that, I found it pretty approachable. The basic knowledge it assumes is that you know what processors (and registers), pointers are and what a goto instruction does. It doesn't seem like a wild expectation. (Or something that you couldn't google in a few minutes if you already have some programming knowledge. And if you don't, why would you want to start with understanding how a VM works in the first place?)