The Basics Of Programming

Programming is a term that is often thrown around a lot when people talk about IT. But what exactly is programming? The average person perceives programming as something mysterious, almost mystical in its difficulty. However, there are many different types of programming and levels of difficulty. 

The thing to understand is that there are many different programming languages which are utilised to do different tasks. These languages are generally built from other languages. In each language, the programming types in text to tell the program that she is creating what to do. Different languages require different syntax to perform tasks. 

The main division in programming languages is between scripted languages and compiled languages. Scripted languages tend to be languages made for web development such as HTML, PHP and JavaScript. Compiled languages are generally more difficult and are used to built drivers, operating systems and executable programs. Compiled languages are more difficult as the programmer has to master abstract concepts such as objects, strings etc etc. 

Arguably the more basic programming language is Hyper Text Markup Language (HTML). HTML is the language in which web pages programmed. The HTML controls the size of the text, the font and the core basics of a web page. Different languages can be used in conjunction to improve the aesthetic and functionality of the webpage such as CSS, Javascript and PHP. CSS, or Cascading Style Sheets, controls the style of the page or the layout. For example, if I wanted to move the navigation bar at the top I would edit the CSS of the page. PHP and JavaScript can be used to make websites more extendable through form processing and web applications. Web applications are programs that are built into a webpage. While PHP is a server side language, Java is browser based. This might not mean much for now, I guess the next blog post will have to be on web development, databases