Programming 101 — 1. intro
Disclaimer: the Programming 101 series was originally written to be published as a short book. However, since I never got round to finishing it, I’m publishing the chapters here as individual blog posts…
Beep!
Computers dominate our lives. We use them for work, to navigate our
cars, to keep us entertained, to monitor our vital signs when we undergo
surgery — the list is endless. We tell them to perform a specific task
and they obey (some would say “for now, still”!), fulfilling their duties with unrelenting predictability and punctuality. This is done with “software” — a set of instructions performed by the electronic machinery of a computer or “hardware”. In other words, software is the language we humans use to communicate with our machines. But what do we actually know about this language?
This book aims to answer precisely this question. It is not an introduction to computer science nor will it teach you to use a specific programming language. It will, however, use elements of both to help you understand the concept of computer programming. Rest assured, though, no prior knowledge of either computing theory or programming languages is needed. I certainly did not have any when I started my own journey in software development! What I would have liked, though, at…
