Answer 1

From mighty SO, the accepted answer says:

"Executables are binary files that are understood by the operating system. The executable will contain sections which have data in them. Windows uses the PE format. The PE Format has a section which has machine instructions. These instructions are just numbers which are ordered in a sequence and is understood by the CPU. [...] ¹"

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¹ https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1616772/how-exactly-do-executables-work