Is it really true that “programming is the oxygen of 21st century”?
It really sounds opposite to the real fact. Definitely it could not. Programming languages are used to develop mobile apps, web pages and software. They are also used to integrate embedded systems. That’s really great. But there’s so many challenges one could face during a course study in computer programming. The possibility options of these challenges might be due to low level skill in the field.
Why Programming?
You may already have used software, perhaps for word processing or spreadsheets, to solve problems. Perhaps now you are curious to learn how programmers write software. A program is a set of step-by-step instructions that directs the computer to do the tasks you want it to do and produce the desired output. There are at least three good reasons for learning programming:
- Programming helps you understand computers: A computer is only a tool. If you learn how to write simple programs, you will gain more knowledge about how a computer works.
- Writing a few simple programs increases your confidence level: Many people find great personal satisfaction in creating a set of instructions that solve a problem.
- Learning programming lets you find out quickly: whether you like programming and whether you have the analytical turn of mind programmers need.
Even if you decide that programming is not for you, understanding the process certainly will increase your appreciation of what programmers and computers can do. A set of rules that provides a way of telling a computer what operations to perform is called a programming language. There is not, however, just one programming language; there are many. In this write-up, you will learn about controlling a computer through the process of programming. You may even discover that you might want to become a programmer.
Learn more about programming on a computer and the different fields one should pay attention to by downloading my free eBook “Program a Computer to Learn ‘How To Think’” now.
The Structural Form of Computer Programming
Programming languages, the primary means of human-computer communication, have evolved from early stages where programmers entered instructions into the computer in a language similar to that used in the application. Computer programming can be classified into the following categories:
- Machine Language: This “machine language” was very tedious to write by hand since even simple tasks such as printing some output on the screen require 10 or 20 machine language commands. Machine language is often referred to as a “low level language” since the code directly manipulates the hardware of the computer.
- Assembly language: Since machine language programming proved to be a difficult and tedious task, a symbolic way of expressing machine language instructions is devised. In assembly language, the operation code is expressed as a combination of letters rather than binary numbers, sometimes called mnemonics. The most popular assembly language is the IBM assembly language because the computer understand and executes only machine language programs, the assembly language program must be translated into a machine language
- High level language: The difficulty of programming and the time required to program computers in assembly and machine languages led to the development of high level languages. Among the existing and popular high level programming languages are FORTRAN, Basic, COBOL, Pascal, Algol, and P1/1. The high level languages are, generally, described as Third Generation (computer) language. By contrast, higher level languages such as “C”, C++, Pascal, COBOL, FORTRAN, ADA and Java are called “compiled languages”.
In a compiled language, the programmer writes more general instructions and a compiler (a special piece of software) automatically translates these high level instructions into machine language. The machine language is then executed by the computer. A large portion of software in use today is programmed in this fashion.
We can contrast compiled programming languages with interpreted programming languages. In an interpreted programming language, the statements that the programmer writes are interpreted as the program is running. This means they are translated into machine language on the fly and then execute as the program is running. Some popular interpreted languages include Basic, Visual Basic, Perl, Python, and shell scripting languages such as those found in the UNIX, Linux and MacOS X environment.
- Very high-level language: Languages called very high-level languages are often known by their generation number, that is, they are called fourth-generation languages or, more simply, 4GLs. It was not long ago that few people believed that 4GLs would ever be able to replace third-generation languages. These 4GL languages are being used, but in a very limited way.
Program Structure
Virtually all structured programs share a similar overall pattern:
i. Statements to establish the start of the program
ii. Variable declaration
iii. Program statements (blocks of code)
First and foremost, algorithm design is the step by step procedure of designing a model, software or whatever else. One should learn how algorithm work in real life, as it is mere a procedure or step by step instructions of solving a problem. Assume if the “problem” happens to be developing a software, then all it demands from the beginning is algorithm design, in which in plan, design and future activities should be declared before been taken to the programmer.
Algorithm design involves conceptual and physical entity. The conceptual entity is the design and planning the structure of the model in mind; an imaginative features, while the physical entity is the use of real-life objects like pen and a book to write down all the plans and design the imaginative features – bringing them to real-life. Now, these processes are called algorithm design. Well, a model could not have existed without being designed and programmed.
Another useful thing that programmers make more consideration on is pseudo-code, which is also a physical design of how a model should be. For instance, SQL instructions seems to be like pseudo-code, example:
INSERT INTO inbox (message) values ($message)
This statement is exactly how SQL insertion statement is. It is a command to insert ‘message’ into the table ‘inbox’ in the database.
Pseudo-code happens to be like these commands. It helps algorithm to better design and state the features of a model.
The program structures of java programming language:
Java – As one of the most popular programming languages in the world. Java programming language was originally developed by Sun Microsystems which was initiated by James Gosling and released in 1995 as a core component of Sun Microsystems’ Java platform (Java 1.0 [J2SE]). Java is object-oriented programming, simple, secure, high performance, robust, and more dynamics.
“Hello World” program structure
class helloworld {
public static void main (String args []) {
System.out.println (“Hello World”);
}
}
The examples of the above program gives the computer the instruction to print out “Hello World”
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