What is programming?
Programming is the process of instructing the computer to perform some desired action. The learner manipulates the computer. Think of it as teaching a student with perfect memory but very limited capacity to interpret what you say. Unless your instructions are explicit, accurate, and detailed, the computer will be unable to understand what you would like it to do. If you are familiar with the classes that computer science majors take, you might equate programming with some image you have of a programmer sitting at a computer terminal typing in code in BASIC, Java, C+, or some other recognizable high-level programming language. It is useful to take a somewhat broader perspective.
Programming has not always involved the specialized languages we recognize today. Early programmers did not type in programming instructions using keyboards, but used a series of toggle switches to enter commands in binary (1’s and 0’s); that is, each unique combination of 1’s and 0’s told the computer to take a very specific action. The world of technology has changed a great deal since then. Higher-level languages now allow programmers to work with commands and ways of combining commands that are easier to learn and easier to enter into the computer than the binary coding. Still, learning these commands and what they do and learning the rules that define how the commands can be combined according to the grammatical rules of the language take a considerable amount of time. The programming techniques of the future may also be very different from today’s techniques. Already, some programming environments take a visual approach and allow the "programmer" to arrange icons (miniature pictures) representing different computer actions. Later, we show you a type of programming in which the computer can be "taught" through a form of demonstration. The programmer "shows" instead of "tells" the computer how to act in a specific situation.
So it is useful to take the perspective that programming can take many forms and different types of programming are evolving to meet different purposes. Once programmers get past the challenge of providing instructions to the computer, either because they have mastered a programming language or because the technology has been adapted to allow some other form of input, manipulating the computer or a device controlled by the computer is a matter of explaining exactly what it is the computer is to do. The challenge at this point is easily underestimated and is much more a matter of higher-order thinking than memorizing the factual information of programming commands and rules.