Computer programming is the art and science of creating programs for the computer hardware to follow. A program is a set of instructions written by a programmer. The processor or the CPU which is the brain of the computer fetches those instructions from a written program stored in the memory and execute them one after the other.
Giving instructions to a computer is just like giving directions to a visitor. If you were suppose to say turn left but you said turn right your visitor might head to a different direction. Instructions given to a computer should be specific and in sequence one after the other. Programmers, developers or coders write programs using high level languages like c++, Python, Java, ruby etc. The lines of codes written by the programmer is called a source code and these codes are later compiled into machine code for the CPU to understand.
The instructions we give the computer could be ‘add two numbers together’ or ‘ check whether the user has press the enter key’ or ‘ display an image on the screen’, there could be 5 instructions contained in a program or even 100 or a million and each instruction is telling the computer to do something very specific.
The art of programming is taking a large idea and breaking it down into simple individual steps, using a set of rules to solve a problem, and these rules are called algorithm.
Ousman Faal [Digital Vigilante] is a Tech Entrepreneur & Digital Skills Trainer who teaches both in the classroom and online. He has experience in various technologies and likes sharing it with others. Ousman has published 149 articles on this blog. He is the CEO of Faalen Technologies and Skills.gm.
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