Programming

Languages

Computers follow instructions given to them by humans. They can solve only the problems that people tell them to solve. To tell a computer what to do, you must know what problem you want to solve and have a plan for solving it. Unfortunately, these instructions can’t just be given to the computer in normal English. A computer can perform tasks very quickly, but it is not intelligent like we are.

A computer will do:


 * only what it is told and
 * exactly what it is told.

This means that computer programs have to be written in a very precise way, according to strict rules. There must be no confusion over what instructions mean.

A set of instructions and rules that a program can be written in is called a //programming language//.

There are over 2500 High Level Programming Languages in use today. Most programmers are expert in two or three. Some are so well known, you may have already heard of them:


 * Java
 * C++
 * HTML
 * JavaScript