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What comes to you mind when you hear the word 'Programming'?
This word, ‘Programming’ has been quite a buzz word since about a decade, and now we are having AI which talk about replacing programming or better framed for current scenario : assisting in coding.
So what actually comes to your mind when you hear the word ‘Programming’? If you are from non-science background, the probably some high academic achiever with big glasses, working on their desk most of the time and typing something colorful on screen. Well, you are not that far away from truth honestly. There are mostly 3 cases for this.
1. We love coding and solving new problems (logical aspect)
2. We love building new solutions (creative and problem dissection)
3. Worst Case: Something is on priority in our company and deadline is there, still that stress feels enlivening sometimes. Note the word: sometimes
And yes, we do have glasses 🙂
What actually is 'Programming'?
See the advent on computer did usher a revolution in the way we go about our lives. But this didn’t happen from start. It was a progressive state, in which enhancement and incorporation in human society was happening simultaneously. Slowly it became an imperative part of your lives, and well so. We do live a better and well connect lives among all generations of humans that have lived till now thanks to technical revolution.
But but but….there’s a catch , a computer is not a magic box, though it seems like that on surface. A computer by itself is only a machine and unless you specify what needs to be done it cannot do anything on its own. It’s a machine with high processsing and speed but no thinking power.
And that is what makes us humans unique. The power to think. So we do what we do best, we give instructions to the machine that it has to follow. These instructions are written in a file, generally, that we call a ‘Script’. The instructions that we write is the ‘code’ or the ‘program’.
Every code serves a purpose as we give instruction for machine to do something, remember that. How significant or insignificant that purpose is , or just a fun with machine capabilities like making it print you name a hundred times, that depends on the programmer, who is writing the instructions and giving them to machine to execute.Â
Why 'Programming Languages'?
Now take machine and human as 2 separate entities. The language that we communicate in, like English, is not something the computer will understand. A machine will understand its own language which is known as the ‘Machine Language’. What we humans understand is the ‘High-Level Language’. Â
Now lets talk about machine’s language, you see, machine language has only 2 character which are 0 and 1.Â
Shocked, right? With such less character how is it able to perform the task?Â
Well, now that depends on patterns. Like how we can communicate in 26 characters of english alphabets by joining and rearranging them, similar is for machines, just that they have 2 character 0 and 1, and each instruction we write is understood by them as 0 and 1 pattern, and they execute that.
Why 0 and 1?
As they represent 2 binary absolute states , False and True. False is for 0 and True is for 1.
Now here comes the impossibility, we humans cannot make or write infinite patters on 0 and 1 to give it to machine to understand. We can, but very very rare and very vert time inefficient, till that time the problem we are trying to solve might either exaggerate or disappear all together and replaced by a newer problem.
So what do we do now?
We write code/program in a language that we can understand, and for now assume there is a black box between us and the computer. This black box translates our language to language with machine understand. And then like an efficient powerhouse of resources, it executes the instructions that we specified brilliantly.
Hence, the language in which we write the code is the Programming Language.Â
Now here’s a catch 2.Â
The language is not same as our speaking language and has some rules and format we have to follow.
Example:
I want computer to display on Screen : What a nice weather!
but i cannot type the same and it will understand.
I will choose a programming language, in this case Python and give it instruction like:
print(‘What a nice weather!‘)
Then on executing it, it will give me desired output.
This is the need of programming language.
Why so many 'Programming Languages'?
Now if you search the internet for Programming Languages, you will see that there are many languages, why?
Well each serve its different purpose, broadly categorizing:
1. Computation
2. Modelling
3. Application Development
4. Website development
5. Ease of use
6. Speed
You choose the one that fits you task and ease of doing the best.
The thing is that if you are thorough with basics, its never hard to transition from one language to other, like maximum proficiency can be achieved in a week , provided you were already proficient in one , as mostly only the syntax is different.
Well now, that was a very top level approach to some basic questions about programming, hope you had fun reading it. Now, its enough of reading time for this article, let’s meet in the next 🙂