Introduction to Programming

Welcome to the World of programming.

Programming is an interesting field with a lot of job opportunities. You'll enjoy working with computers, especially when programming games. It encourages us to think.

What is a Programming language first?
A programming language is a vocabulary and set of grammatical rules for instructing a computer to perform specific tasks. Each language has a unique set of keywords(words that it understands)(?) and a special syntax for organizing program instructions.
There are three types of programming languages.
High level Programming languages
Assembly level programming languages
Machine languages.

High-level programming languages while simple compared to human languages, are more complex than machine languages, the languages the computer actually understands. Each different type of CPU has its own unique machine language. Lying between machine languages and high-level languages are languages called assembly languages. Assembly languages are similar to machine languages, but they are much easier to program in because they allow a programmer to substitute names for numbers. Machine languages consist of numbers only.

Syntax refers to the spelling and grammar of a programming language. Computers are inflexible machines that understand what you type only if you type it in the exact form that the computer expects. The expected form is called the syntax.

A program is a logical pattern of instructions to solve a problem.
The basic steps in creating a program are:
1. Define the problem
2. Define the problem solution by algorithms
3. Code the program using the programming language
4. Test the program for errors
5. Documentation
6. Implementation

The commonly used program design tools are Structured charts, Pseudo-code, Algorithms and Flowcharts.

The computer can only understand machine language. So whatever code we write in high level languages or assembly language should be converted in to machine language.
It is done by Compilers or Interpreters.

If you are new to Programming, You should start with the C programming language first because:

C is everywhere.
Programmers around the world embrace C because it gives maximum control and efficiency to the programmer.
You will be able to read and write code for a large number of platforms -- everything from microcontrollers to the most advanced scientific systems can be written in C, and many modern operating systems are written in C.

Please do reply with your views.
Thank you,
Parameswaran.