What is Computer Programming?

I never planned to work in tech; after studying journalism, I was all set for a career as a foreign correspondent for a print newspaper. Sadly, I graduated at the peak of the economic crisis, and the severe decline in print media.

So, after shedding a few tears, I landed a job at a publishing company that specializes in B2B tech. At the time, it was trying to establish a strong online news presence and needed a journalist with basic computer programming skills. While I didn’t know how to code at the time, I gladly stepped up to the plate. I adored learning and loved problem-solving, so computer programming seemed like the perfect fit.

The first thing I had to do was work out exactly what computer programming involved, and how I was going to teach myself how to code. After many hours of research, and help from friends and family in the industry, I finally started to get enough of a handle on it to be able to explain it to other newbies. So here I am, ready to share my newfound knowledge with fellow learners!

What is computer programming?

Computer programming is a way of giving computers instructions about what they should do next. These instructions are known as code, and computer programmers write code to solve problems or perform a task.

The end goal is to create something: that could mean anything from a web page, or a piece of software, or even just a pretty picture. That’s why computer programming is often described as a mix between art and science; it’s technical and analytical, yet creative at the same time.

When I first started looking for courses to teach myself how to code, I realized just how much I didn’t know. My brothers work as programmers, so I’d seen the lines and lines of symbols and letters they wrote, but I had no idea what they all meant. I didn’t even know how what I saw on my screen when I was carrying out simple tasks such as shopping online or browsing social media related to these mystical languages.

I researched the subject thoroughly, but most of the articles I read were full of technical jargon that I didn’t understand. In what is a pretty common problem in the B2B tech world, I couldn’t find anything that explained it clearly and simply.

The definition above is my attempt—as a journalist first and techie second—at explaining exactly what it is, as simply as possible.

Coding versus programming

When I was looking for resources to learn to code at an affordable price, I stumbled across Codecademy’s HTML course. When I told my techie friends what I was learning, they informed me that HTML is not considered a programming language. I had a poke around Stack Overflow to find out more, and I discovered that while some seasoned programmers consider it a programming language, others don’t.

Take this answer:

Any instruction that tells the computer to do something is a programming language.

Versus:

No, HTML is not a programming language. The "M" stands for "Markup". Generally, a programming language allows you to describe some sort of process of doing something, whereas HTML is a way of adding context and structure to text.

In fact, Stackify doesn’t include either HTML or CSS in its list of most popular coding languages for 2017.

This uncertainty brought me to the debate that continues to rage over the difference between coding and programming. One of the distinctions that is often made: coding is a lightweight version of programming. Programmers write serious code, but coders are often marketers, content creators (like myself), or graphic designers who dabble in a bit of HTML or CSS.