programming-for-dummies

Knowing Programming versus Knowing Programming Language 27
write programs in the C programming language, you might mistakenly think
that the way the C language works is the way computer programming also
works, but that’s not true.
Book I
Chapter 1
Like human languages, programming languages differ wildly. Someone who
knows how to write programs in the C language thinks differently about
programming than someone who knows how to write programs in assembly
language.
So to describe how programming works, this book uses a variety of examples
from different programming languages. You don’t have to understand how
each program example in this book works. Just understand that programming
languages can look and solve identical problems in wildly different ways.
Getting Started
Programming a
Computer
First, try to understand general programming principles without worrying
about the way a particular programming language works. Then try to understand
how a particular programming language works. As long as you know how
to keep these two topics separate, you can figure out how to program a computer
without the distraction of knowing a particular programming language.
Programming languages rise and fall in popularity all the time, so if you know
only one programming language, your skills may become obsolete within a
few years.
At one time, most programmers used assembly language. Then they used
Pascal. When Pascal fell out of favor, programmers gravitated toward C. Because
C was so hard to understand, many people started using BASIC. At the time of
this writing, programmers have been flocking toward C++, C#, and Java.
Tomorrow, who knows which programming language will be popular?
Focus on understanding programming and then worry about understanding
a particular programming language. After you understand how programming
works, you can adapt to the next popular programming language of tomorrow,
whatever that might be.