Let's say aliens arrive on Earth and instead of just sending mathematicians and linguistic experts governments around the work decide to send an expert of major field.

After a quick round of sorting you are paired up with an alien computer scientist.

Given you don't understand each others language how would you using computer science to start the ground work of communication?

eg. We know binary is universal, but not the way we write it. The symbols are not universal nor is the the direction we write it (MSB vs LSB and left vs right)

Assume aliens are "similar" to us physically it won't impede visual communication.