Know what programming actually means

Less than a decade ago, there wasn't much exposure to computers for normal people like us. But, now is the era of computers. I am very sure everyone must have used some sort of computer ( phone, atm, laptop, tablet, desktop computer, and many more ).

We are surrounded by computers, some are small ( Smartphones ) & some are big( Super Computer ). Different Computers have a different purpose and use.

With this extensive use of computers and their usefulness. We should know more about computers and how they work in general.

Okay, with that said let’s start our discussion on how a computer works.

Computers are nothing but machines. Machines at their core don't know how to make their own decisions and function on their own. We have to tell the computer or more specifically give instructions, so it will perform our task.

We can say a computer is like an obedient pet dog, who obeys our every instruction without complaining.

But, some of you may argue. Well, Smruti isn't a computer much more powerful like it can perform so many things, calculations, computations, and whatnot.

Yes, it's true that it can do so. But, we shouldn't forget that the applications and software which do those works for us are written by a software developer.

A computer just obeys what we tell it to do. Software developers write apps or more precisely write programs that do different tasks. You can say every app on your phone or laptop is a program. In fact, the whole android or windows is a program called an operating system.

A program is nothing but instructions for the computer for doing a specific task.

Computers are fast and they are good at repetitive tasks. But still, they need to be programmed for doing that, and for that ultimately we have to write those programs.

Programming( or coding ) means writing instructions for the computer to do a specific task.

The people who write programs are called programmers or coders( or night owls : )

The language that we use to write programs is called programming language. We have tons of programming languages out there in the market. Like new languages come every year. Each language has some pros and cons and each is suitable for doing specific tasks.

Some of the most common programming languages are python, C, C++, Java, and JavaScript. Each has its importance and use case.

I am a web developer, I make websites. Here the websites are nothing but programs that run on our browsers ( which is also a program ), the browser like chrome is installed on our laptop or phone i.e. on android or windows ( which is also a program )

So, overall we can say Operating System( android, windows, or iOS ) is the parent program, on which we have installed a lot of apps, one of them being chrome, and the website runs on that.

In this example, for writing an operating system we need different programming languages. For writing apps, we need different programming languages.

C/C++ and assembly language can be used to make an operating system( it's just the mother of programs ).

Java/Kotlin can be used to write android applications.

Swift can be used for writing iOS applications.

HTML/CSS/JS can be used for making websites.

So, there are various programming languages for doing various tasks. Each programming language bears a different syntax and flavor of writing. But the core concepts underneath stay the same.

I hope I have influenced you enough to start learning to program. If you are interested in programming and tech, you should consider following me. I will be posting such articles more often.

See ya next time!