The 3 First Concepts to Understand

Hello all,

To get us started with programming, I wanted to talk about the three most important concepts to understand when you are learning how to code.

1. 1. Variables
      • Variables store information. You can put information in a variable as you would in a mailbox or a file folder. Then, to recall it, you use the variable’s “name” (also called “identifier”).
      • In most languages, assigning a value to variable looks similar to this: myVariable = 42. Here, myVariable is the variable’s identifier / name.
      • Variables are used in…
   2. Instructions
      • An instruction tells the computer what to do: add two numbers, count to 5,000, print out a recipe for delicious cornbread, or basically anything else you can think of. One instruction can, in turn, trigger a whole set of instructions to execute. A computer program is a series of instructions, which brings us to…
   3. Sequencing
      • Most programming languages being used nowadays are called “imperative” because the way you program using these languages is by telling the computer what to do in a sequence of instructions. The computer can only execute instructions one at a time, so it’s important to think of your program in this way: do one thing, then do another thing afterwards. It seems simple, but keeping this concept of sequencing in mind will help you when you are thinking about how to write your program.

Hope you enjoyed this short article. Next time we’ll get deeper into the basics of coding.

Alex