Computer Programming

Computer programming is the craft of writing useful, maintainable, and extensible instructions which can be interpreted by a computing system to perform a meaningful task. Programming a computer can be performed in one of numerous languages, ranging from a higher-level language to writing directly in low-level machine code (that is, code that more directly controls the specifics of the computer's hardware) all the way to writing microcode (which does directly control the electronics in the computer).
Using programming languages and markup languages (such as XHTML and XForms) require some of the same skills, but using markup languages is generally not considered "programming." Nevertheless, many markup languages allow inclusion of scripts, e.g. many HTML documents contain JavaScript. There are exceptions where markup languages do represent programming such as SuperX++ (http://xplusplus.sourceforge.net/) and o:XML (http://www.o-xml.org/)
Computer programming is one part of a much larger discipline known as software engineering, which includes several different aspects of making software including design, construction and quality control. The subject of this book is software construction, that is, programming. Computer programming is also a useful skill (though not always necessary) for people who are interested in computer science. Whereas software engineering is interested specifically in making software, computer science tends to be oriented towards more theoretical or mathematical problems.
Many people think they must choose a specific programming language in order to become a programmer, believing that they can only do that language. They ask themselves, "should I be a C programmer or a Java programmer?" That's completely the wrong question. The right question is "How can I become a good programmer?" Unfortunately the employment market has contributed greatly to misconceptions about computer programming. Companies will often advertise for employees with a specific computer language skillset, perhaps because it is difficult for hiring managers to judge competence or general ability in computer programming.
There are a few points one can make about what a good programmer knows about specific computer languages. First - many languages are based on the same fundamental building blocks. Learning a language should be seen more as a way of acquiring those concepts than language or machine specific techniques. Second - good programmers are generally competent in more than one language because it is naturally interesting and useful to find different ways of solving problems. It is not necessary to master many different languages or even more than one -- a programmer could excel in one language and have only a vague working idea how to program others. It is useful to know many different methods for solving computer problems, also known as algorithms. An algorithm is a list of well-defined instructions for completing a task, and knowing several languages means having the ability to list the computer instructions in many different ways. Since computer programming languages have so much in common, it is generally easy to learn a new programming language once you have mastered another.
So how do you get started? One reasonable technique would be to just pick a language and run with it. Unfortunately, we cannot suggest what the right computer language might be for all people for all purposes. Ask ten programmers what language you should learn and you will get ten different responses. Given the collaborative nature of this wikibook, you'll probably get as many responses as there are programming language books on the site.

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