What Everyone Should Know About Coding and Programming
What is Coding?
“Coding” is a commonly used term for computer programming. Some people use it interchangeably with programming, while others would argue they are not entirely the same.
By definition, “code” refers to a set of instructions that tells a computer what to do. Computers don’t understand human language, so over time, humans have created languages that computers can understand. And developers speak to them through those languages.
Examples of coding languages include HTML, GitHub Markdown, CSS, JavaScript, and Python, among many others.
When you learn how to code, you’ll be able to write instructions for computers to follow. This lets you make websites, applications, and software, and do some other cool stuff.
How coding works?
Simply, code is what tells your computer what to do. Let’s take a deeper dive, computers don’t understand words. They only understand the concepts of on and off. The capabilities of a computer are switched on and off by switches and transistors. The binary code represents these on and off transistors as 0 and 1 digits.
An infinite number of combinations of these codes make your computer work. To make binary code manageable, computer programming languages were formed. These languages serve various purposes, but they all allow programmers to translate important commands into binary code.
What is Programming?
If coding is the act of writing instructions for a computer to follow, what then is programming?
Many developers view programming as a more advanced term than coding, and a lot of others use both words interchangeably.
Programming still involves writing instructions for the computer to follow, but now data structures and algorithms are important. Some coding languages such as HTML, CSS, and Markdown don’t use algorithms and data structures, while others such as JavaScript, Python, Java, and C++ use them heavily.
This brings up a distinction that many developers make. In the web development industry, many developers don’t consider HTML to be a “programming language” in a strict sense, because it doesn’t perform any logic. It just determines the structure of a website.
On the other hand, languages like JavaScript, Python, C++, and Java, are all “official” programming languages because they handle complex functionalities and interactivity.
Some developers refer to anyone who codes in just HTML and CSS as a coder, and those who code in JavaScript, Java, C++, and other programming languages as programmers.
So you could say that all programmers are coders, but not all coders are programmers. But not everyone feels this way, so it’s important to do your own research and learn the skills before you take a side
As a Technological social enterprise, TECHAiDE is ready to partner various development stakeholders to promote and accelerate the attainment of Goal 4 as they fulfil Goal 17 of the SDGs and Implementers on the other hand, assured the development partners that they are equally willing to use the experience and skills in project management to ensure that all projects committed by the partners are effectively implemented within time, scope and budget.
