Introduction to Programming and Computer - Full Article

Introduction to Programming and Computer - Full Article

Different segments that hope to cover the basics of computer programming which can apply to any and all programming languages you might want to learn we'll be starting with the simplest question of what is programming and from there we will be working our way up as we talk about common features of computer science such as loops and arrays will discuss. 

Introduction to Programming and Computer - Full Article

How to read and write code debug code that you've written some strategies to help you plan out your code and much much more the complete list of topics that are going to be covered in this lecture style video are shown on the screen now additionally there will be timestamps in the description so feel free to skip around if you are already proficient in some areas of computer science or just want to know about a specific topic we will be covering hopefully by the end of the series you'll have a basic understanding of what computer science is along with an armoury of useful skills that will help you unravel. whichever programming language you decide to learn first we'll only be covering the major key points that apply to all programming languages so we'll be shying away from topics such as object-oriented coding and command-line navigation as those are things which are language-specific additionally there will be no software required for you to download in order to follow along with this tutorial as we won't be writing any code in an IDE to keep things simple and concentrated this video is meant for those who are interested in computer science and programming but have no idea where to start and have little to no background information on coding and so if that sounds like you then strap in as Sean and I work our way through the wacky world of computer science starting with the biggest question probably on your mind which is what even is programming well the dictionary defines.

It as the process of preparing an instructional program for a device but that's a really confusing definition so in layman's terms what exactly does that mean essentially it is attempting to get a computer to complete a specific task without making mistakes imagine this for example you want your less than intelligent friend to build a Lego set except he has lost the instructions and can only build based on your commands remember though your friend is far from competent and so if they are not given very specific instructions on how to build the set there are many mistakes that they could make if he thinks like a computer then if there is even one piece that you have not told them specifically where to place and how to place it the entire Lego set will be ruined and you will be left to suffer a complete mental breakdown causing the whole goal of of the project to be corrupted giving instructions to your friend is very similar to how programmers code instead of a less than intelligent friend you have a less than intelligent computer and instead of instructions on how to build a Lego set we are feeding it information on how to complete a program like a game or a web application an important thing to note is that computers are actually very dumb we built them up to be this super sophisticated piece of technology when in actuality a computer's main functionality comes from how we manipulate it to serve our needs now programming isn't as simple as giving your friend instructions since in a programmers case the computer doesn't speak the same language as you the computer only understands machine code.

which is a numerical language known as binary that is designed so that the computer can quickly read it and carry out its instructions every instruction fed to the computer is converted into a string of ones and zeros and then interpreted by the computer to carry out a task going back to the Lego example this process would be like if he was not only less than intelligent but to make matters worse he could not understand English and only speaks in Mandarin Chinese in order to speak with him you have to convert the instructions that you understand in English into the language that your friend understands this process is essentially what you must do for your computer in order to make it understand the instructions that you give it the big difference between the two examples however are that it is very difficult for people to understand machine code in binary directly translating what you want the computer to do into machine code is extremely difficult in fact almost impossible and will take a very long time to do it if you could each program is composed of millions upon millions of those ones and zeros so how exactly are we supposed to translate our instructions into machine code this is where programming languages come into play programming languages are fundamentally a middleman for translating a program into machine code these languages are much easier for humans to learn than machine code and thus are very useful for programmers going back to our Lego example a programming language would sort of be like an interpreter that's able to take the instructions you give them in English and translate them into instructions your non-english speaking friend can understand this makes programming languages. extremely useful and the backbone of any good program think of programming languages as not English and not machine code but somewhere in the middle there are many different programming languages out there that each has their own unique uses languages such as Python and Java act as general-purpose languages that can perform a variety of computational tasks while robot C or HTML or CSS our language is designed for more specific purposes such as moving a robot or constructing a website language can also vary in how powerful they are for instance javascript is a scripting language that is designed for smaller tasks or Java or Python and carry out much more computationally taxing processes we can measure a programming languages power or level by how similar.

it is to machine code this series of zeros and ones we talked about earlier low-level programming languages such as assembly or C are closer to binary in a high-level programming language such as Java or Python the basic idea is that the lower the level of your programming language the more your code will resemble what the machine can interpret as instructions aside from the different purposes that each language fulfills choosing a language typically comes down to a matter of preference as are usually many languages that can accomplish similar tasks try different languages and decide which one's rules interface and level of simplification you like best so now that we know what programming.

how do we actually write code it's not like we can simply type words into a text document and automatically assume that the computer can translate it into machine code read it and carry out a task like opening up a browser and additionally we can't just write down rubbish in certain programming languages mentioned in the previous segment and expect the computer to understand so how are we supposed to write code then well the answer is with an IDE which stands for integrated development environment allows the facilitation of code by a computer.

I des provide a graphic interface on your computer in which the programmer can easily write run and debug code without having to worry about problems with complication or interpretation of the program think of an IDE as any other program on your computer such as a game.