Computer Programming

Programming is a lot of fun and extraordinarily useful. While you learn to program, you'll also develop a host of other analytical and critical thinking skills for tackling all sorts of complex problems (not just ones on computers) and it may just help you start a new career or land a new job in software development.

Computer programming is almost always done in some sort of Programming Language. These languages are written so that humans can understand them, but are formal and rigorous enough to input into a machine.


Programming languages are a way for you to express your thoughts about how to perform a specific task. As such, the programming language you start out with will inherently influence how you think about a particular problem. This influence is usually called the programming language's paradigm.

There are hundreds – even thousands – of programming languages out there. (Programmers like to write new programming languages.) You don't need to learn them all to be a good programmer, in fact, many of them use the same paradigm as other languages, so by learning one programming language, you'll probably have a “Reading knowledge” of several others and be able to learn it completely rather quickly.

Some languages are geared for specific purposes. C, Java, etc are meant to be “general purpose” languages for building software and computer applications (like a web browser!) Languages like PHP are meant for dynamic websites (like wikiHow!) And there are others still: Python, Perl, etc are “general scripting languages” meant for performing a wide variety of small tasks.

Source: http://www.wikihow.com/Start-Learning-Computer-Programming