[Bob Kuczewski]

I have been programming computers since my first FORTRAN class in 1979. That was back in the days of punch cards, and submitting jobs through an "operator" who would take your cards and eventually run them through the card reader to run your program and produce a paper print out of the results. That process could take between 10 minutes and a few hours (depending on your job priority).

Computing has come a long way since then, but the principles behind programming remain the same. A computer language is a way to specify what you want the computer to do. There have been hundreds (maybe thousands) of computer languages developed over the last few decades. Examples include FORTRAN, COBOL, BASIC, Pascal, C, C++, Java, JavaScript, and Python. Additionally, each type of computer or microprocessor typically has its own special low level computer instruction set which is programmed via an "Assembly Language" specific to that hardware.

You might be surprised to know that you've already been doing some very simple computer "programming" just by posting on this forum. Every post is a set of characters that you are "programming" the computer to save and display for people to view. So just typing is a form of programming. And if you add any special formatting (like bold, size, or color), then you are giving the computer additional instructions on how to display your text. That's a form of programming.

I've started this topic to discuss programming in general, but I plan to also start individual topics for each computer language that we explore. Those topics will be more specialized for each language, but this topic will be for general information and requests. I hope you enjoy these projects, and I'll update this post with links to each language being explored. Please feel free to post in any of these topics.

1. Learn to Program: BBCode     (note that this link might log you out)
2. Learn to Program: JavaScript     (note that this link might log you out)

Have fun!