What is Programming?

What is Programming?

The roots of man-machine relationship runs back to thousands of years. Today, we manipulate various
kinds of machines. Out of myriads of machines available for the human, the computer has become the
foremost, due to the fact that it is programmable and versatile.

Like all other machines, computers are not wise. But it is made to obey and work according to a set of instructions given by the human. These instructions are stored in the computer’s memory and the computer is allowed to follow them in the given sequence. Thus computers provide a close association with human in the context of solving real world tasks. This has paved the way to, what is called “Computer Programming”.


Programming
The core activity in the process of instructing a computer in solving problems is known as programming.


Program
An ordered set of instructions given to a computer to accomplish a given task is known as a program.
[ Programming is the art of designing, coding, modifying and testing programs.]


Man-Machine Communication
Conveying human thoughts to a computer in solving problems is not easy. Human beings are intelligent. They use natural languages, signals, symbols etc. in exchanging ideas among them. Computers on the other hand are dumb. They can only understand their native language called machine language, which comprises of streams of bits and bytes. So one choice of programming a computer is to use machine language, in its native form.