Computer programming in plain language,What Is Computer Programming Anyway? Articles is giving
instructions to a computer to do something. Technically it
is actually giving instructions to the microprocessor – the
brain of a computer.
If the instructions are only for the microprocessor, why a
computer is so complicated with numerous types of hardware
accessories?
All the other hardware are to support the function of
feeding the instructions to the microprocessor, and
conveying the result from the microprocessor to its user –
which can be a human or another computer or hardware.
Every time you want a computer to do something you have to
give the instructions. Luckily people are http://technologieit.com/ smart enough to
figure out that since we might want the computer to repeat
the same process over and over again, we better store the
instructions into a permanent storage – hard disk, CD, flash
memory etc.
The stored instructions are called COMPUTER PROGRAM or
computer software and the act of arranging the instructions
is called COMPUTER PROGRAMMING and the person that is
responsible to arrange the instructions is called
…..COMPUTER PROGRAMMER …do you see the pattern here?
On the lowest level, a microprocessor only understands a
limited set of instructions. To a microprocessor the
instruction sets and data are read in “binary” form.
Binary means 2 states – such as in on and off, high and low,
left and right. To make it easier mathematically, binary
normally is represented by 1 and 0. Electrically, 1
represents high voltage and 0 represents low voltage.
On the hard disk, program instructions look just like a
stream of 1s and 0s. But a microprocessor reads in the
stream one chunk at a time. Among normal chunk sizes are 8,
16, and 32. Chunk size is normally referred to as
instruction size.