Computer Programming is the act of creating programs, software, and applications. In order to create computer programs, some programming or scripting language is used by providing instructions. Even computer programming generally referred to as creating instructions there are extra duties to accomplish computer programming act. Even term in computer programming the programming act can be beyond the computer where the created software or program can be run on different platforms or hardware like mobile devices, iOS, Android, iPhone, iPad, SmartTV, etc.
Computer Programming History
Even modern computers are created in 1950’s where programming languages roots goes to 9th century.
- In 1206 Arab engineer Al-Jazari invented the programmable drum machine with some musical automation.
- Also, Arab mathematician Al-Kindi described the cryptographic algorithms in the 9th century.
- The first computer program is created by Ada Lovelace to calculate Bernoulli numbers in 1843.
- In the 1880s Herman Hollerith invented storing data in machine-readable form.
- In 1906 Type I Tabulator allowed to accomplish different calculation jobs.
- The modern computer programming era started with IBM 602 and IBM 604 by the late 1940s.
- The machine code was the default and only programming language which is generally developed with binary notation.
- In the early 1950s Assembly language is created to create single development language for multiple systems and architectures.
- First high-level programming languages like Fortran, Cobol, Lisp are created in 1957.
- One of the most popular programming language C is created in 1970 in order yo developed operating system named Unix.
- With the popularity of the Personal Computers (PC) new and modern programming languages are emerged in the 1980s and 1990s like Java, Python, PHP, Ruby etc.
Learning Computer Programming
Computer Programming is generally referred to as technical work. In order to create enterprise-level and reliable computer programs some experience, knowledge, and talent is required. If you are unfamiliar with computer programming first take some paid or free courses and make real-world small projects like calculator, item manager, student information management.
The most important tip for learning a programming language is making real-life projects and looking for good code examples to implement these learning projects.
Computer Programming Languages
In order to program computer software a platform and programming should be selected without a programming language, there is no way to programming. Programming language defined the rules and methods to create software. There are a lot of computer programming languages but some of them are very broad and popular. Also, some programming languages suit well for some computer software. Below we will explain and describe some popular programming languages to create computer programs. Following graphic shows the most popular programming languages of 2019.
Java is one of the most popular programming languages which is the top one according to this graph. Java is created in the 1990s and used in enterprise software from banking to web applications.
C language is another popular programming language where system-level software like operating systems, drivers, services are created. C is popularly used for no interface or GUI applications mainly.
Python is easy to learn and human-friendly programming language which is also called a scripting language. Python is mainly used for server-side and big data applications but the library support is very wide.
C++ is an advanced version of the C programming language where mainly object-oriented features with some useful libraries are provided. C++ is used for low-level applications with some high performance required applications like graphic design, driver, etc.
C#is a programming language that is created by Microsoft for the .NET platform. C# provides similar features and use cases like Java with more modern features and usage. C# mainly used for Microsoft based operating systems and platforms even it supports Linux.
Visual Basic.NET is the next version of the Visual Basic programming languages which is an alternative .NET programming language. Visual Basic.NET is the sister of the C# and was mainly designed to be an easy entry for old-style Visual Basic coders.
JavaScript is a defacto web browser programming language mainly used with HTML and CSS to make the web applications and sites interactive and work as a desktop application.
PHPis a web application development language that runs on web servers. PHP is very popular where can be also used other than web.
Coding vs Programming
Even there is a debate between coding and programming whether they are the same or different. Or coding is a lightweight version or programming and programmers generally write better and more reliable code. Actually there is no difference where coding and programming terms are the same which is mainly used the act of creating code or program. May be programming is the broader definition which refers to a more complete program or software creation.