How a miner works

Hello community,

Im trying to figure out exactly how the miner works and what it is doing. I think I have a good idea but I would really appreciate it if someone with a coding background could help out. (I have done quite a bit of programming in the past and the hardest part of this for me is understanding what someone else's code does)

What im hoping for is a step by step on what it actually does, possibly in a pseudocode format.

Also i would like to know if there is a simulation i can test my code against to verify that it works?

At this point i have no code because i dont quite understand what is going on. I would like to contribute and perhaps a detailed post on what happens could be beneficial to more people than just me.

Hopefully one of you veteran coder/miners can help me out.

Thanks!