Hello there everyone and welcome to my very first blog post 😃!
A brief introduction of myself:
My name is Mohamed, a 20 year old Computer Science undergraduate who resolved recently to start sharing what I learn mainly in Web Development and Python programming in the most simplest of terms my tiny brain can come up with. Let's get started shall we 😊!
Your absolute best friend:
Many of us underestimate the tool that is deliberately available for us and FOR FREE which is search engines. I believe that consulting definitions first and foremost is crucial in any path you take irrelevant of what the goal of this pursuit might be. Whether it's seeking professionalism or simply raising ambiguity. Trust me, you'd be amazed at how far a simple Google search can take you!
With that being said, let's hear what Wikipedia has to say about programming:
Computer programming is the process of designing and building an executable computer program to accomplish a specific computing result or to perform a specific task.
"What a hell of a search that was, I feel like I am back to square one". Some of you (if not most) would find formal definitions to be a bit confusing and troubling so I will try to simplify it for you.
So what is it!
Plainly and simply put, programming is instructing a machine to perform a task. How would you do that? Well, the same way you would instruct a human, through communication. Humans speak to one another using languages, which is what happens essentially with programming! You communicate with the machine using a language both of you comprehend, these languages are called programming languages. A programming language is a human-readable language with special syntax (set of rules that combines different symbols which make up correct statements -orders-). This language cannot be executed or understood by the computer if it's not in binary (representations of electrical charges), so the human-readable format gets translated down to binary code through a handful of mechanisms that we will discuss in further posts.
What's special about this communication is that misunderstandings always come from us programmers
"Come again? So computers never get it wrong or what?"
Yep, they never get it wrong, they are always right. This is one of the reasons why I absolutely LOVE computers! The only barrier between you and your computer is your own logic and how well you express it! And for those of you who are inspired to become programmers one day, keep that it in mind! Computers never get it wrong!
So how come that's the case?
Well, as we previously said, programming is all about instructing machines, right? So all machines do is perform the tasks precisely and exactly as they were handed out to do; which means, if the programmer doesn't express the instructions well the computer then won't understand and thus, the task will not be computed/performed.
So how can I learn programming?
I will share with you in the upcoming days my journey with programming and how I learnt it (and still am!) as for now, I hope you didn't forget about your best friend! You will be asking it day in and day out whatever crosses your mind, really, whatever! It's there to provide you with everything you ask for, so ask a lot!
The End
I hope you liked my introductory post. More articles coming up next so make sure you follow the blog! Any feedback or constructive critique is warmly welcomed and appreciated, so please tell me what you think in the comments so I can better the quality. Thanks for reading ❤️!
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Photo by Florian Olivo on Unsplash