Intro1






Introduction
to Programming









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Lesson
1: An Introduction to Programs




Lesson
Requirements
Nothing.

Lesson
Summary
This first Lesson is
aimed at introducing the complete novice to programming. Absolutely
no prior knowledge is required. If you are a moderate or
experienced programmer you might want to jump ahead to Lesson 2.

Programs.
What Are They?
To begin we will
consider some very basic but important questions:

1. What is a Program?
2. How do I make Programs?
2. What is "Programming"?
4. What is a Programming Language?

Now let's answer these questions:

1. A Program is a series of
instructions describing the process to complete an action. Let's
consider an example, how do we make a cup of coffee? We are going
to write out a Program to do this:


Making
Coffee:
a. Boil some
water
b. Get an empty mug
c. Place a spoonful of coffee in the mug
d. When the water has boiled, fill the mug with the water
e. If we want milk, add milk to taste
f. If we want sugar, add sugar to taste


Well, nothing Earth-shattering
here. But the point is that a Program is nothing more than a set
of instructions. A computer program is just like the above recipe
to make coffee.

2. You can make a Program in
English -- just like the how to make coffee Program above. You
make a Computer Program by writing the instructions in a Language
that the computer can understand. These languages are referred to
as Programming Languages.

3. Programming is a term used to
describe writing Computer Programs. "Coding" and
"Writing code" are other such terms.

4. Programming Languages are the
instruction sets we use to describe our "recipe" (or
Program) to the computer. Some common Programming Languages are
BASIC, Pascal, and C. Programming Languages are discussed in more
detail in Lesson 3.

Hopefully the task of programming
seems a little less daunting now!

 



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John Crickett & Neil Henderson.
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