Programming Basics/Introduction/What is programming?

From Wikibooks, open books for an open world
Jump to navigation Jump to search

A computer can’t do anything on its own. To do a task, you have to tell it what to do and how to do it. For example, let’s imagine a computer whose task is to cook a dish. The recipe contains the steps to follow to cook this dish. More specifically, the recipe is the program that tells the computer how to execute this task.

What is a computer program?

A computer program is a sequence of instructions that can be executed by a computer.

The computer needs a recipe to cook the dish. But, how to get this recipe? It is simply a matter of creating the instructions necessary to run the program. In other words, you have to go through the first fundamental process of creating a program, which is programming.

What is programming?

Programming is the process of creating a set of instructions that tell a computer how to perform a task.