Computer programming

Computer programming is the process of performing a particular computation (or more

generally, accomplishing a specific computing result), usually by designing and building an
executable computer program. Programming involves tasks such as analysis, generating
algorithms, profiling algorithms' accuracy and resource consumption, and the implementation
of algorithms (usually in a chosen programming language, commonly referred to as coding).
[1][2] The source code of a program is written in one or more languages that are intelligible to
programmers, rather than machine code, which is directly executed by the central processing
unit. The purpose of programming is to find a sequence of instructions that will automate the
performance of a task (which can be as complex as an operating system) on a computer, often
for solving a given problem. Proficient programming thus usually requires expertise in several
different subjects, including knowledge of the application domain, specialized algorithms, and
formal logic.

Tasks accompanying and related to programming include testing, debugging, source code
maintenance, implementation of build systems, and management of derived artifacts, such as
the machine code of computer programs. These might be considered part of the programming
process, but often the term software development is used for this larger process with the term
programming, implementation, or coding reserved for the actual writing of code. Software
engineering combines engineering techniques with software development practices. Reverse
engineering is a related process used by designers, analysts, and programmers to understand
and re-create/re-implement.[3]

Contents
History
Machine language
Compiler languages
Source code entry
Modern programming
Quality requirements
Readability of source code
Algorithmic complexity
Chess algorithms as an example
Methodologies
Measuring language usage
Debugging
Programming languages
Programmers
See also
References
Sources
Further reading
External links

History
Programmable devices have existed for centuries. As early
as the 9th century, a programmable music sequencer was
invented by the Persian Banu Musa brothers, who described
an automated mechanical flute player in the Book of
Ingenious Devices.[4][5] In 1206, the Arab engineer Al-Jazari
invented a programmable drum machine where a musical
mechanical automaton could be made to play different
rhythms and drum patterns, via pegs and cams.[6][7] In 1801,
the Jacquard loom could produce entirely different weaves
by changing the "program" – a series of pasteboard cards
with holes punched in them.

Code-breaking algorithms have also existed for centuries. In

the 9th century, the Arab mathematician Al-Kindi described
a cryptographic algorithm for deciphering encrypted code,
in A Manuscript on Deciphering Cryptographic Messages.
He gave the first description of cryptanalysis by frequency Ada Lovelace, whose notes added
analysis, the earliest code-breaking algorithm.[8] to the end of Luigi Menabrea's paper
included the first algorithm designed
The first computer program is generally dated to 1843, for processing by an Analytical
when mathematician Ada Lovelace published an algorithm Engine. She is often recognized as
to calculate a sequence of Bernoulli numbers, intended to be history's first computer programmer.
carried out by Charles Babbage's Analytical Engine.[9]

In the 1880s Herman Hollerith invented the concept of

storing data in machine-readable form.[10] Later a control
panel (plug board) added to his 1906 Type I Tabulator
allowed it to be programmed for different jobs, and by the
late 1940s, unit record equipment such as the IBM 602 and
IBM 604, were programmed by control panels in a similar
way, as were the first electronic computers. However, with
the concept of the stored-program computer introduced in
1949, both programs and data were stored and manipulated
in the same way in computer memory.[11]

Machine language
Data and instructions were once
Machine code was the language of early programs, written
stored on external punched cards,
in the instruction set of the particular machine, often in which were kept in order and
binary notation. Assembly languages were soon developed arranged in program decks.
that let the programmer specify instruction in a text format
(e.g., ADD X, TOTAL), with abbreviations for each operation
code and meaningful names for specifying addresses. However, because an assembly language
is little more than a different notation for a machine language, two machines with different
instruction sets also have different assembly languages.
Compiler languages

High-level languages made the process of developing a

program simpler and more understandable, and less bound
to the underlying hardware. The first compiler related tool,
the A-0 System, was developed in 1952[12] by Grace Hopper,
who also coined the term 'compiler'.[13][14] FORTRAN, the
first widely used high-level language to have a functional
implementation, came out in 1957,[15] and many other
languages were soon developed—in particular, COBOL Wired control panel for an IBM 402
aimed at commercial data processing, and Lisp for Accounting Machine. Wires connect
computer research. pulse streams from the card reader
to counters and other internal logic
These compiled languages allow the programmer to write and ultimately to the printer.
programs in terms that are syntactically richer, and more
capable of abstracting the code, making it easy to target for
varying machine instruction sets via compilation declarations and heuristics. Compilers
harnessed the power of computers to make programming easier[15] by allowing programmers to
specify calculations by entering a formula using infix notation.

Source code entry

Programs were mostly entered using punched cards or paper tape. By the late 1960s, data
storage devices and computer terminals became inexpensive enough that programs could be
created by typing directly into the computers. Text editors were also developed that allowed
changes and corrections to be made much more easily than with punched cards.

Modern programming

Quality requirements

Whatever the approach to development may be, the final program must satisfy some
fundamental properties. The following properties are among the most important:[16] [17]

Reliability: how often the results of a program are correct. This depends on conceptual
correctness of algorithms and minimization of programming mistakes, such as mistakes in
resource management (e.g., buffer overflows and race conditions) and logic errors (such as
division by zero or off-by-one errors).
Robustness: how well a program anticipates problems due to errors (not bugs). This
includes situations such as incorrect, inappropriate or corrupt data, unavailability of needed
resources such as memory, operating system services, and network connections, user
error, and unexpected power outages.
Usability: the ergonomics of a program: the ease with which a person can use the program
for its intended purpose or in some cases even unanticipated purposes. Such issues can
make or break its success even regardless of other issues. This involves a wide range of
textual, graphical, and sometimes hardware elements that improve the clarity, intuitiveness,
cohesiveness and completeness of a program's user interface.
Portability: the range of computer hardware and operating system platforms on which the
source code of a program can be compiled/interpreted and run. This depends on
differences in the programming facilities provided by the different platforms, including
 hardware and operating system resources, expected behavior of the hardware and
operating system, and availability of platform-specific compilers (and sometimes libraries)
for the language of the source code.
Maintainability: the ease with which a program can be modified by its present or future
developers in order to make improvements or to customize, fix bugs and security holes, or
adapt it to new environments. Good practices[18] during initial development make the
difference in this regard. This quality may not be directly apparent to the end user but it
can significantly affect the fate of a program over the long term.
Efficiency/performance: Measure of system resources a program consumes (processor
time, memory space, slow devices such as disks, network bandwidth and to some extent
even user interaction): the less, the better. This also includes careful management of
resources, for example cleaning up temporary files and eliminating memory leaks. This is
often discussed under the shadow of a chosen programming language. Although the
language certainly affects performance, even slower languages, such as Python, can
execute programs instantly from a human perspective. Speed, resource usage, and
performance are important for programs that bottleneck the system, but efficient use of
programmer time is also important and is related to cost: more hardware may be cheaper.

Readability of source code

In computer programming, readability refers to the ease with which a human reader can
comprehend the purpose, control flow, and operation of source code. It affects the aspects of
quality above, including portability, usability and most importantly maintainability.

Readability is important because programmers spend the majority of their time reading, trying
to understand, reusing and modifying existing source code, rather than writing new source
code. Unreadable code often leads to bugs, inefficiencies, and duplicated code. A study found
that a few simple readability transformations made code shorter and drastically reduced the
time to understand it.[19]

Following a consistent programming style often helps readability. However, readability is more
than just programming style. Many factors, having little or nothing to do with the ability of the
computer to efficiently compile and execute the code, contribute to readability.[20] Some of
these factors include:

Different indent styles (whitespace)

Comments
Decomposition
Naming conventions for objects (such as variables, classes, functions, procedures, etc.)

The presentation aspects of this (such as indents, line breaks, color highlighting, and so on) are
often handled by the source code editor, but the content aspects reflect the programmer's talent
and skills.

Various visual programming languages have also been developed with the intent to resolve
readability concerns by adopting non-traditional approaches to code structure and display.
Integrated development environments (I.D.Es) aim to integrate all such help. Techniques like
Code refactoring can enhance readability.

Algorithmic complexity
The academic field and the engineering practice of computer programming are both largely
concerned with discovering and implementing the most efficient algorithms for a given class of
problems. For this purpose, algorithms are classified into orders using so-called Big O notation,
which expresses resource use, such as execution time or memory consumption, in terms of the
size of an input. Expert programmers are familiar with a variety of well-established algorithms
and their respective complexities and use this knowledge to choose algorithms that are best
suited to the circumstances.

Chess algorithms as an example

"Programming a Computer for Playing Chess" was a 1950 paper that evaluated a "minimax"
algorithm that is part of the history of algorithmic complexity; a course on IBM's Deep Blue
(chess computer) is part of the computer science curriculum at Stanford University.[21]

Methodologies

The first step in most formal software development processes is requirements analysis, followed
by testing to determine value modeling, implementation, and failure elimination (debugging).
There exist a lot of different approaches for each of those tasks. One approach popular for
requirements analysis is Use Case analysis. Many programmers use forms of Agile software
development where the various stages of formal software development are more integrated
together into short cycles that take a few weeks rather than years. There are many approaches
to the Software development process.

Popular modeling techniques include Object-Oriented Analysis and Design (OOAD) and Model-
Driven Architecture (MDA). The Unified Modeling Language (UML) is a notation used for both
the OOAD and MDA.

A similar technique used for database design is Entity-Relationship Modeling (ER Modeling).

Implementation techniques include imperative languages (object-oriented or procedural),

functional languages, and logic languages.

Measuring language usage

It is very difficult to determine what are the most popular modern programming languages.
Methods of measuring programming language popularity include: counting the number of job
advertisements that mention the language,[22] the number of books sold and courses teaching
the language (this overestimates the importance of newer languages), and estimates of the
number of existing lines of code written in the language (this underestimates the number of
users of business languages such as COBOL).

Some languages are very popular for particular kinds of applications, while some languages are
regularly used to write many different kinds of applications. For example, COBOL is still strong
in corporate data centers[23] often on large mainframe computers, Fortran in engineering
applications, scripting languages in Web development, and C in embedded software. Many
applications use a mix of several languages in their construction and use. New languages are
generally designed around the syntax of a prior language with new functionality added, (for
example C++ adds object-orientation to C, and Java adds memory management and bytecode to
C++, but as a result, loses efficiency and the ability for low-level manipulation).
Debugging

Debugging is a very important task in the software

development process since having defects in a program can
have significant consequences for its users. Some languages
are more prone to some kinds of faults because their
specification does not require compilers to perform as much
checking as other languages. Use of a static code analysis
tool can help detect some possible problems. Normally the
first step in debugging is to attempt to reproduce the
problem. This can be a non-trivial task, for example as with
parallel processes or some unusual software bugs. Also, The first known actual bug causing a
specific user environment and usage history can make it problem in a computer was a moth,
difficult to reproduce the problem. trapped inside a Harvard mainframe,
recorded in a log book entry dated
After the bug is reproduced, the input of the program may September 9, 1947.[24] "Bug" was
need to be simplified to make it easier to debug. For already a common term for a
example, when a bug in a compiler can make it crash when software defect when this insect
parsing some large source file, a simplification of the test was found.
case that results in only few lines from the original source
file can be sufficient to reproduce the same crash. Trial-and-
error/divide-and-conquer is needed: the programmer will try to remove some parts of the
original test case and check if the problem still exists. When debugging the problem in a GUI,
the programmer can try to skip some user interaction from the original problem description
and check if remaining actions are sufficient for bugs to appear. Scripting and breakpointing is
also part of this process.

Debugging is often done with IDEs. Standalone debuggers like GDB are also used, and these
often provide less of a visual environment, usually using a command line. Some text editors
such as Emacs allow GDB to be invoked through them, to provide a visual environment.

Programming languages
Different programming languages support different styles of programming (called
programming paradigms). The choice of language used is subject to many considerations, such
as company policy, suitability to task, availability of third-party packages, or individual
preference. Ideally, the programming language best suited for the task at hand will be selected.
Trade-offs from this ideal involve finding enough programmers who know the language to build
a team, the availability of compilers for that language, and the efficiency with which programs
written in a given language execute. Languages form an approximate spectrum from "low-level"
to "high-level"; "low-level" languages are typically more machine-oriented and faster to
execute, whereas "high-level" languages are more abstract and easier to use but execute less
quickly. It is usually easier to code in "high-level" languages than in "low-level" ones.
Programming languages are essential for software development. They are the building blocks
for all software, from the simplest applications to the most sophisticated ones.

Allen Downey, in his book How To Think Like A Computer Scientist, writes:

The details look different in different languages, but a few basic instructions appear in
just about every language:
Input: Gather data from the keyboard, a file, or some other device.
Output: Display data on the screen or send data to a file or other device.
 Arithmetic: Perform basic arithmetical operations like addition and multiplication.
Conditional Execution: Check for certain conditions and execute the appropriate
sequence of statements.
Repetition: Perform some action repeatedly, usually with some variation.

Many computer languages provide a mechanism to call functions provided by shared libraries.
Provided the functions in a library follow the appropriate run-time conventions (e.g., method of
passing arguments), then these functions may be written in any other language.

Programmers
Computer programmers are those who write computer software. Their jobs usually involve:

Prototyping
Coding
Debugging
Documentation
Integration
Maintenance
Requirements analysis
Software architecture
Software testing
Specification

Although programming has been presented in the media as a somewhat mathematical subject,
some research shows that good programmers have strong skills in natural human languages,
and that learning to code is similar to learning a foreign language.[25]

See also
ACCU Object hierarchy
Association for Computing Machinery System programming
Computer networking Computer programming in the punched
Hello world program card era
Institution of Analysts and Programmers The Art of Computer Programming
National Coding Week Women in computing
Timeline of women in computing

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Further reading
 A.K. Hartmann, Practical Guide to Computer Simulations (https://web.archive.org/web/2009
0211113048/http://worldscibooks.com/physics/6988.html), Singapore: World Scientific
(2009)
A. Hunt, D. Thomas, and W. Cunningham, The Pragmatic Programmer. From Journeyman
to Master, Amsterdam: Addison-Wesley Longman (1999)
Brian W. Kernighan, The Practice of Programming, Pearson (1999)
Weinberg, Gerald M., The Psychology of Computer Programming, New York: Van Nostrand
Reinhold (1971)
Edsger W. Dijkstra, A Discipline of Programming, Prentice-Hall (1976)
O.-J. Dahl, E.W.Dijkstra, C.A.R. Hoare, Structured Programming, Academic Press (1972)
David Gries, The Science of Programming, Springer-Verlag (1981)

External links
Media related to Computer programming at Wikimedia Commons
Quotations related to Programming at Wikiquote
Software engineering (https://curlie.org/Computers/Software/Software_Engineering/) at
Curlie

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