Basics and Concepts of Programming

For programming languages, several terms are used. Some important terms i.e. "programming", "programmer", "programming language" etc. of programming languages are presented in this page. At last, some programming languages features are presented shortly.

Programming is referred as:

• Computer Programming or
• Programming or
• Coding

It is a sequential process of the following things:

• Writing the source code
• Testing the source code
• Debugging the source code
• Troubleshooting the source code
• Maintaining the source code

The person who writes or builds program or software or computer software by using any programming language, are known as programmer or computer programmer.

The tasks of any programmer are the followings:

• Requirement analysis and design
• Coding
• Compiling
• Testing
• Documenting
• Integration and maintenance

Programming language is also referred as:

• Computer programming language/languages
• Coding language/languages
• Software Coding language/languages
• Computer language

The language by which any program or software is written, is known as programming language.

Characteristics:

• Actually it is an artificial language.
• It is used to write any program.
• Every programming language have several syntax and semantics.

Several types of programming languages are developed. Some of their names are given below:

• C
• C++
• C#
• COBOL
• Java
• FORTRAN
• Visual Basic

Type             : Block-structured

Origin           : Ritchie and Thompson(1972-73), Kernighan and Ritchie(1978)

Description  :

• Low-level programming language
• Block structured language
• A powerful language for writing tight, fast, highly tuned code
• It is much portable than assembly.
• Good support for system programming
• It is widely used in PC, Mac, mainframe, and other computing environments. 

Type : Object Oriented

Origin : Bjarne Stoustrup, AT&T Bell Labs (1982-85)

Description :

• Complicated object-oriented programming language
• Derived from C (actually, it's an extension to C)
• Syntax is a much similar to C
• Offers wide range of OOP features:

                          inheritance (single and multiple inheritance)

                          dynamic memory management,

                          templates (generics)

                          polymorphism

                          encapsulation

                          overloading

                          exception handling

[OOP = Object Oriented Programming]

Type : Object-oriented

Origin : Gosling et al, Sun Microsystems (1994-95).

Description:

• Fundamental component of a Java program is the class.
• Every data and method in Java are associated with class.
• Full-featured, portable object-oriented language.
• Designed by research staff at Sun Microsystems.
• Most of the features of Java are:

                     modularity (packages)

                     polymorphism  

                     strong type checking

                     dynamic loading of libraries  

                     concurrency  

                     arrays

                     string handling  

                     garbage collection 

                     exception handling

                     extensive standard library