In today’s class we take our first lesson in Computer Programming. We have by now acquainted ourselves with the basics of Computers, their components and their use.
Just to round up, A Computer is a machine that accepts an accumulation of raw data and sequential set of instructions, manipulates the raw data on the basis of the instructions and derives the final result as meaningful information for us.
As is clear, to be able to get the Computer to perform our tasks, we must communicate with it by providing instructions as to what we want done. That brings us to our first basic principle – What is a computer program? or What is programming?
A Program: is a set of instructions to the computer in a specific order to make it perform a specific task or function to produce the desired output or result.
Likewise, Computer Programming, refers to the science of writing programs for the computer to perform tasks for us and producing the desired results in human intelligible form.
Communication as we know is a two way process where two parties are involved and must understand each other. If not, it leads to what we know as a Communication Gap.
We communicate with the computer when we issue instructions(program) and data to be processed as input. The computer communicates with us when it gives us the desired result in the form of the output. As with all forms of communication, we need a language to be able to convey our information and to understand what the other party says. That brings us to our next area of study – Programming Languages, which we shall learn in our next class to follow.