So you want to be a programmer, eh. Well that’s a good thing you know , but learning how to talk to a computer can be daunting if you are a beginner. But don’t worry we are here to help you on your journey to be a proficient programmer in a jiffy. Did I say in a jiffy? Well it’s not exactly true as becoming a good programmer comes with lot of toil and hard work. But worry not if you are true to yourself and are willing to put in the hours in front of your computer coding away you will become a good programmer eventually.
Before we delve into the different programming languages and other technical jargon, the first thing you need to know is what is programming and how does programming forms the interface between you and your machine. Well simply put we write bits of code on plain text files that when executed does some special task on your computer. That’s it. That’s all there’s to it. But wait is that it? Well nah definitely. The text I’m talking about has a certain grammar to it that makes sense to the computer. This grammar is known as syntax in computer land. Well the text we write is in human readable form. This is known as program file.
This file is then converted to assembly language which again reads almost like english but this time filled with weird symbols and what not which won’t make sense to a layman. This assembly language is then converted to a machine language which is the format that the computer understands. But before all this you need to understand how writing a text file does all of this. For that you need to know a bit about basic electronics and how computers work on a hardware level.
You know computers are basically switching devices. They are machines made up of small,very small devices known as transistors. Transistors are basically electronic switches and they usually has two states. On or Off. By combining various on/off states of millions of transistors, we can essentially create a complex circuitry which can represent any real world scenario. That’s it. We are essentially controlling these transistors by programming. Refer to our basic electronics section on.
