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. “