programming-for-dummies

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Using Keywords as Building Blocks
Every program consists of step-by-step instructions. Just as you can write
the same instructions for a person in English, French, Spanish, Arabic, or
Japanese, so can you write the same program for a computer in different
programming languages.
You can literally write a program with thousands of possible programming
languages. Every programming language is designed to solve one problem
exceptionally well, but may solve other types of problems poorly.
For example, the BASIC programming language is meant to teach programming,
but it’s not very good for controlling the hardware of a computer, such
as for writing an operating system or antivirus program. On the other hand,
the C programming language is meant to give you absolute control over
every part of the computer so that’s why most operating systems and
antivirus programs are written in C. However, the C language can be much
more frustrating and confusing for novices to understand compared to
BASIC.
Ideally, you want to pick the programming language best suited for solving
your particular problem. Realistically, you probably know only a handful of
programming languages, so out of all the languages you know, you have to
pick the one language that’s best suited for solving your problem.
You can write any program in any programming language. The only difference
is that some programming languages can make writing certain programs
easier than others. The “best” programming language to use is always
the language that makes writing a program easy for you.
Using Keywords as Building Blocks
Every program consists of one or more commands (instructions), and each
command is a line of code or a statement. The more lines of code, the more
complicated the program.
The goal of programming is to write the fewest lines of code that do the maximum
amount of work.
Each command tells the computer to do one thing. Put enough commands
together and you can create a simple program, as shown in Figure 1-1.