Welcome, beginners!
In this section I will share tips and exercises for beginner programmers and for people who want to learn how to program, or if you hesitate about wanting to learn computer programming, maybe by looking at the examples and information here you will decide if it’s for you or not.
I will try to explain programming concepts in English, and try to avoid using technical language as much as possible.
Programming language
A programming language is a language that is used in order to make computer programs.
Most of the programming languages share the same basics and concepts. The main differences between the available programming languages includes some syntax differences, framework differences, and a different running environment. Some languages are mostly used in order to develops applications that run on desktop computers, some are used for mobile devices, some are use on different kinds of servers and some are used in web applications.
It is also possible to “translate” any code written in one language to another language, but in some cases there are other constraints that limit the usage to specific languages.
The first decision about this section was to choose the programming language to use for explaining and demonstrate programming concepts.
The main 2 languages I considered were C++ and Java, and I chose Java (Why Java?).
The main reason for choosing Java over the other languages is that it’s more practical, as it lets you develop client applications that you can run on your PC (and you don’t need a server in order to run it), and you can use it on any common operating system (including windows, MacOS/OSX, and Android).
What’s next
In order for the learning to be fluid, we will first install the development environment that we will later use for demonstrations and exercises.
Then – we will start by explaining the basics of computer programming in the following pages. We will get familiar with how a computer program works, what are variables and why do we need them, how to debug, and gradually dive into more advanced topics.
Note that one of the most important things about programming is paying attention to details, and reading instructions carefully without skipping words.
The words you skip might be “not” or “never”.
Enjoy!