Many newcomers to programming make the error of choosing a popular language without a roadmap, i.e. without direction. They’re going to hit a snag sooner or later. It is unusual for a potential programmer to take the initiative to explain the many concepts, languages, and tools needed to be a good programmer.
In this essay, I will explain the necessary steps for every aspiring or established developer to take in order to be successful out there. I’d be discussing programming principles, languages, and tools that ordinary developers utilize. These stages were carefully chosen based on the author’s experience and frequent research in the technology industry. This post is just intended to raise awareness of relevant subjects that will help developers succeed in their area.
Know about computer architecture and data basics
Abstraction is one of the most fantastic aspects of a modern programming language. Developers do not need to worry about hardware details and may instead focus on development. It can narrow the extent of a skill’s understanding.
It is also critical to understand your computer’s architecture. Your computer’s essential components are housed on integrated circuits or microchips. Transistors are used to power these microchips. A single microchip may have millions or billions of transistors.
The Central Processing Unit (CPU) is the computer’s brain. It is the area of the computer where logical activities like fetching, decoding, and executing instructions take place. Each CPU contains an instruction set, which is a collection of binaries (zeroes and ones). These are the commands that the CPU recognizes. Developers can avoid having to grasp this set of instructions by using abstraction.
The CPU is the logical component of the computer that can store data in both the long and short term (temporal). The computer uses Random Access Memory (RAM) for short-term memory, while the hard drive or ROM (Read Only Memory) is used for long-term memory. It’s hard to discuss memory storage without mentioning what it saves (Data). At a high level, data can be viewed as documents, multimedia, emails, files, folders, and so on. Data is stored in bits, which are ones and zeros on a computer chip. A byte is a group of eight bits that are used to store information. It may be something like 00000001 or 01100110.
How do programming languages work?
We discussed binaries in the last section as commands that the computer understands. As a result, we can write code that tells the CPU what to do in a way that it understands. The machine code is the form that the computer understands. These codes are not like the ones we use every day. Python, JavaScript, and Java are examples of high-level programming languages.
A higher-level language is one that has human-readable instructions or syntax that is simple to learn. These languages serve as a link between how humans interpret the world and how machines understand the world.
A higher-level programming language may be either compiled or interpreted. Python and JavaScript are interpreted languages, whereas Java is a compiled language. We’d go into more detail afterward.
How does the internet work?
The internet can be viewed as a global network of computers linked together to share resources (data). Data is shared in the form of ones and zeros, such as web pages, multimedia, emails, and so on. A network’s computers communicate with one another. If both are present and available, one opens the conversation and the other responds to it.
The computer that initiates the conversation is known as the client, while the computer that responds to the discussion is known as the server.
Assume you launched your web browser to go to “www.facebook.com”. The client in this example is the browser attempting to access this page. The person attempting to view this page is also known as the client. When you finish typing the address into the search window and press enter, you are requested to initiate a dialogue with the server that hosts the Facebook website. The server responds by transmitting the necessary data to display the Facebook web page. This is known as a reaction. If it is successful, the Facebook page is rendered; otherwise, an error message is sent. This type of client/server interaction is used in Internet data transfer.
Familiarise yourself with some command-line basics
In movies, the command line is frequently shown as a cryptic black screen with difficult-to-decipher or interpret characters. Behind the screen is typically a nasty hacker attempting to bring down a government or organisation; other times, it’s a brilliant techie.
The command line is relatively simple to use and allows us to execute some of the things that the mouse’s point-and-click system allows us to do. The only difference is that it requires the use of a keyboard.
You can use the command line to navigate between folders, create new folders, move files, copy files, delete files, run programs, and much more. A terminal is a window where you type all of the commands to accomplish operations on the command line.
Open the terminal application, which is a Unix Command Line Terminal, if you are using a Mac OS (Operating System). If you use an operating system that does not have a graphical user interface (GUI), such as Linux or Unix, you are already at the command line. If your Linux or Unix system has a graphical user interface, you should navigate to and open the application.
That concludes volume 1. In the following volume, we’ll look at how to run some simple commands via the terminal. Then we proceed on our journey to being a professional programmer.
Conclusion
Becoming a successful programmer necessitates time, money, and commitment; without these three tools, it is very difficult to create something awesome; good things in life necessitate a lot of commitment; follow the standard principle of learning programming and you will achieve programming knowledge as expected very soon.
