Introduction to the world of Programming
What is Programming ?
According to wikipedia “Computer programming” (often shortened to programming) is a process that leads from an original formulation of a computing problem to executable computer programs. Programming involves activities such as analysis, developing understanding, generating algorithms, verification of requirements of algorithms including their correctness and resources consumption, and implementation (commonly referred to as coding) of algorithms in a target programming language. source — wikipedia.
Okay lets understand this in a simple way. The computer which you use is just like a “blank box”. It won’t be able to perform any kind of operations on its own. It has to be given a set of instructions to be able to carry out any operations. That “set” of instructions is known as “Programs”. Thus “Computer Programs” tell the computer about what action it has to perform, and obviously this set of instructions has to instructed by the users.
Many times you have come across the term “Programming Languages”. So lets understand what does it mean. Like us, the human beings who can speak and understand instructions in many different languages(for eg:- English, Hindi, French, Spanish, etc) , the computer also can perform operations instructed in many different programming languages. They are just tools to make the computer perform a specific task.
Basically a Computer only understands “Binary”, ie, only the digits ‘0’ and ‘1’. The programming languages are just there to make our (the users) tasks easier. The whole detail of the programming procedure(read “compilation” and “interpretation” process) we will be completing in detail later.
So lets now peep into the history of computer programming.
A walk through the history of computer programming :
You will be amaze to know that the first computer programmer was a lady Ada Lovelace. Born to English poet Lord Byron, who was a prominent figure of romanticism, and Annabella Milbanke, she is best known for collaborating with Charles Babbage on his inventions. However, she hardly knew her father, as he separated from her mother just a month after she was born and died when she was eight.
On June 5, 1833, a seventeen-year-old Lovelace met Charles Babbage at a party, where he was said to be entertaining the crowd with tales of his Difference Engine, a machine he’d designed to produce reliable, error-free math calculations. Lovelace was impressed and wrote a letter to him asking for the blueprints so she could better understand it. In turn, Babbage was impressed by her and became her mentor, discussing math and computing. As MTV puts it “They were kind of like the Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs of the mid-1800s.” The Mirror reported that: She studied science and maths at a time when women rarely had access to such subjects, and collaborated with Babbage on his calculating machines. Lovelace could see the future of computing, and its potential to go beyond mere number-crunching. She identified the machines’ potential to manipulate symbols rather than just numbers, foreshadowing modern computing a century in advance. In fact Lovelace was so ahead of her time that she formed a gambling syndicate with her male friends in 1851 and attempted to create a mathematical model for successful large bets.
But that was not all, Lovelace was capable of. Besides her admirable skill in math, she also had her father’s creative side and wrote extensively on the ‘Nature of the Imagination and Its Three Core Faculties’.
In early January of 1841, two years before she applied her formidable imagination to writing the first paper on computer science and forever changing the course of technology, Lovelace considered the nature of the imagination and its three core faculties in a magnificent letter found in Ada, the Enchantress of Numbers: A Selection from the Letters of Lord Byron’s Daughter and Her Description of the First Computer (public library) — the same volume that gave us Lovelace on science and religion. Lovelace died at the young age of 36 in November 1852 from uterine cancer after several months of illness, but continues to be remembered as a popular figure.
A computer language ‘Ada’, created on behalf of the United States Department of Defence, was named after Lovelace. An annual event is also celebrated in mid-October every year called ‘Ada Lovelace Day’ which aims to raise the profile of women in science, technology, engineering and maths.
source :- The news minute
image sources :- Brainpickings
So its quite inspiring to know that besides scarcity of resources at that time, Ada Lovelace was able to make the computer understand the instructions.
The Present and Future of Programming :
Computer Programming has become the most sought after passion, hobby, and job. It is said that “Every person must know how to code, because it makes you think how a work is done.” In this digital age there is a major demand for computer programmer. It has become the so called “Evergreen field”. Lets see an outline in the picture below.
Yes it is true that everyone is programming. Google, Facebook, Amazon, Instagram, Reddit, Quora, Medium, Twitter, Paytm, Flipkart, Rocket Industries, NASA, etc , almost everything surrounding you is the outcome of computer programming. It has become the basic need of the life. Developers, Sports Programmers, Web Designer, Graphic Designer, Gaming and Animation, Data Scientists, etc are all the subsets of Programmers. Programming is a very vast field. The demand for programmers will keep on rising. A detailed post about every field will be covered later.
