What is computer programming?

Computer programming, often just programming or coding, is about creating working instructions for a device, for how a software should operate in the device. The device is often a computer and a processor processes the working instructions. Instructions must be very accurate since a computer can cope with different situations only with the help of the working instuctions - it can't decide by itself what to do next.

A processor of a computer only understands computer programs written in machine code which practically means patterns of bits consisting of "zeros and ones". It is impossible for human to write software directly in this language and so are different kind of higher level programming languages here to help us.

Programming languages

A programming language is used to write the source code of a program which means the listing of working instructions in somewhat clear text. The source code is often compiled with a compiler to machine code, after which the program can be executed.

There are hundreds of different programming languages but only few dozen popular ones are used in industry - like C, C++, Java and PHP, to name a few. The following is a short example of source code written in Java programming language:

public class FirstProgram {
	
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        // print to screen
        System.out.println("** Java programming is fun! **");
    }
    
}