Coding — talk of the world!

The recent big change and I should mention it here for the sweeping changes brought up by the New National Education Policy of India, Coding has emerged to be the next big thing for the coming years.

These are times when Computer coding has become very important. Every electronic device that you mostly depend on relies on coding. Initially, coding might seem confusing but when you analyse it deep, you will find it simple.

The name for people who make code are coders, developers or programmers. It all works with computers to create websites, apps, and even games!

Computers too have their own language called Machine Code which directs them what to do.

Each number or letter is a command for the computer to alter something in its memory. This could be a number or word, or may be a small part of a picture or video. As you all know, computers are not capable of doing anything by themselves. It is the programmer who takes the initiative to give computers the necessary instructions.

Although it would take a long time, it is possible to learn Machine Code, luckily there is another option and rather an easier one to communicate with computers.

So, the next is Programming Language?

Now, this seems a bit easier to understand! This picture demonstrates on how to tell the computer to say Hello, world. Instead of opting for machine code, it prefers a programming language called Python.

It is in this same way, all programming languages work:

1. First write code to tell the computer what to do: print(“Hello, world”).

2. The code is then compiled, which turns it into machine code. The code the computer can understand.

3. The computer executes the code, and writes Hello, world back to us.

There are more than hundreds of different programming languages which leads you to confusion, but they all do the same thing. Type in what you want the computer to do, the compiler converts it into language understandable by the computer, then the computer executes the code in programming speak!

So, what Is Coding?

The process of using a programming language to make a computer behave how you want it to is Coding. Every coding line instructs the computer to take an action, and a document full of coding lines which is called as script.

Each script is designed to execute a task. This task might be to consider an image and alter its size or even play a certain sound or piece of music. To clarify, when you click like on someone’s post on facebook, a script is what gets it done.

Computers are not like people, they will do exactly as per the assigned command. Although this is considered positive, there is room for it to be considered as negative too. If you give a command to the computer to start counting upwards, it’ll keep counting forever with no intention to stop! A good programmer always knows how to write a command for the computer to act.

What Is a Program?

Only if they are compiled, Scripts can only do things by themselves and then executed. When you are done with it, you want people who aren’t programmers or the layman to be able to use your script. Then, turn your script into a program.

If you are satisfied with your script, you can compile it into a program. So now, it is a machine code which the computer can understand from being a programming language. And now, the machine code is stored in a program can be downloaded by anyone and use. Every kind of game, app or website is a program.

Is Coding really simple?

Coding is so simple that anyone can learn the basics. Just as we see books in a library, so is the example of coding. Some books are simple and easy to understand while others use very complex words and even present stories that justifies no logic. But what most of us fail to realize whether they are easy or hard to read or understand, they are all books.

The more you read books, the better you are to understand. Slowly you will reach a point where it would be easy for you to read those complex or confusing stories that you read in the past.

Every time you do it you get better as against the first time you tried to code it. If in case you find it too hard to learn a programming language, you can still learn the important ideas behind it by using a visual coding language.

Now, What Does Code Look Like

hello_name is the name of the script that is shown in the above image. As you know that a single line of code can make the computer print to the screen. Let’s consider that instead of just saying hello world, you want the user to type in their name, and for the computer to greet them by name? Let’s break down what is happening here.

1. As soon as the script starts the computer prints a question to the screen.

2. Secondly, the computer waits for the user to input their name, and saves it.

3. “Hello” gets printed to the screen, along with the saved name.

4. The script compiles and executes using Python in the Cmder window,

5. Before exit, the script ran just the way it was designed to.

This can be taken as an example which shows you a simple piece of code written in a code editor, and run in Cmder, a type of terminal window. You don’t have to worry too much about what either of these things is for now. You now know what Python code looks like and how this script works.

Now a Code, but later a Program

If you are totally new to code, you might still wonder how scripts like the one above become the kind of programs you are used to using. In the image above, the window on the left is a tool to turn Python scripts into programs. The window on the right has an icon called hello_name.exe. I think you can guess what happens if you were to click on it!

From no code, to a finished program. This example is really simple, but this is how almost all coding works. Every day, people use programming languages they have learned, to write scripts, which will become programs we all use.

Coding Is Cool

I hope this has taught you what code is, and how some Python code works. There are lots of great websites and apps which can assist you to learn programming too!

Coding is for everyone, and initially has never been easier.