What Programming Actually Is

This article outlines what programming actually is, with a view to helping aspiring programmers decide if they are making the right career choice.

Why Programming is important

The question most of the people ask is why should we learn to program when there are so many application software and code generators available to do the task for us. Well the answer is as give by the Matthias Felleisen in the book ‘How to design programs’

“The answer consists of two parts. First, it is indeed true that traditional forms of programming are useful for just a few people. But, programming as we the authors understand it is useful for everyone: the administrative secretary who uses spreadsheets as well as the high-tech programmer. In other words, we have a broader notion of programming in mind than the traditional one. We explain our notion in a moment. Second, we teach our idea of programming with a technology that is based on the principle of minimal intrusion. Hence, our notion of programming teaches problem-analysis and problem-solving skills without imposing the overhead of traditional programming notations and tools.”

Hence learning to program is important because it develops analytical and problem solving abilities. It is a creative activity and provides us a mean to express abstract ideas. Thus programming is fun and is much more than a vocational skill. By designing programs, we learn many skills that are important for all professions. These skills can be summarized as:

• Critical reading
• Analytical thinking
• Creative synthesis

What is programming

As this course is titled “Introduction to programming”, therefore it is most essential and appropriate to understand what programming really means. Let us first see a widely known definition of programming.

Definition: "A program is a precise sequence of steps to solve a particular problem.”

It means that when we say that we have a program, it actually means that we know about a complete set activities to be performed in a particular order. The purpose of these activities is to solve a given problem.

Alan Perlis, a professor at Yale University, says:

"It goes against the grain of modern education to teach children to program. What fun is there in making plans, acquiring discipline in organizing thoughts, devoting attention to detail and learning to be self-critical? "

It is a sarcastic statement about modern education, and it means that the modern education is not developing critical skills like planning, organizing and paying attention to detail. Practically, in our day to day lives we are constantly planning, organizing and paying attention to fine details (if we want our plans to succeed). And it is also fun to do these activities. For example, for a picnic trip we plan where to go, what to wear, what to take for lunch, organize travel details and have a good time while doing so.

When we talk about computer programming then as Mr. Steve Summit puts it

“At its most basic level, programming a computer simply means telling it what to do, and this vapid-sounding definition is not even a joke. There are no other truly fundamental aspects of computer programming; everything else we talk about will simply be the details of a particular, usually artificial, mechanism for telling a computer what to do. Sometimes these mechanisms are chosen because they have been found to be convenient for programmers (people) to use; other times they have been chosen because they're easy for the computer to understand. The first hard thing about programming is to learn, become comfortable with, and accept these artificial mechanisms, whether they make ``sense'' to you or not. “

Design Recipe

To design a program properly, we must:

• Analyze a problem statement, typically expressed as a word problem

• Express its essence, abstractly and with examples

• Formulate statements and comments in a precise language

• Evaluate and revise the activities in light of checks and tests

PAY ATTENTION TO DETAIL

• These skills are useful for anybody

• All assignments in this course should follow the these guidelines

Critical Skills

• Analysis
• Critical Thinking
• Attention to Detail

Alan Perlis

“It goes against the grain of modern
education to teach children to program.
What fun is there in making plans,
acquiring discipline in organizing
thoughts, devoting attention to detail
and learning to be self-critical? “

Program

“A precise sequence of steps to
solve a particular problem"