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INTRODUCTION TO CODING

INTRODUCTION

In your day to day life, you must have come across the term 'coding'. Have you wondered what it means. In this chapter, you are going to learn what is coding and its usage in day to day life.

Traffic light

While going to school, you must have seen a traffic light.

Traffic lights are devices that control the traffic through the use of colours. These lights are placed at road intersections, pedestrian crossing for smooth traffic flow.

How do traffic lights work?

In traffic light, the lights cycle through green (allows traffic to proceed in the direction denoted), yellow (warns that the signal is about to change to red), and red (stops traffic from proceeding) at regular intervals of time. Traffic lights help to prevent accidents and congestion on the roads.

How do the traffic lights change automatically?

Traffic lights contain sensors which are programmed to calculate how many cars or pedestrians are present at a specific point.

At regular intervals of time, the code automatically changes the traffic signals to show colors (red, yellow, green).

Where else do we see applications of coding?

These days a lot of our daily lives rely on coding. We are somehow connected through coding. For example, the smartphones, computers, videogames, car dashboards, etc. are all using some sort of code to perform its task.

What exactly is coding?

Coding or programming is a process of creating codes to instruct a computer to perform a specific task. There can be more than one way to solve the problem; similarly, there are many ways to write code for the same task.

Let see an example:

When you play video on your smartphone. Your smartphone will act as a computer which needs to be instructed (in this instructions will be given by the application which plays the video) at each and every step on what to be done. The application playing the video provides this instruction via programming language.

What is a programming language?

Language is the primary means of communication for all human interactions. In the same way, to interact with computers, you need a language which the computer understands and is called a programming language.

To communicate with computer, programmers use computer language which is known as programming language. So, programming language can be defined as a set of instructions which are written in any specific computer language to perform a set of activities.

Programming languages have syntax. Syntax is same as grammar in our English language.

The syntax is a set of rules that we need to follow when we write a computer program. Every programming language has its own syntax. But programming language will eventually be converted into a language which computer will understand.

Examples of programming languages are C, C++, C#, Python, PHP, Java, JavaScript, R, F#, etc.

At a Glance

A lot of our lives rely on coding in one form or other.

Traffic lights are devices that control the traffic through the use of colours.

Traffic lights are placed at road intersections, pedestrian crossing for smooth traffic flow.

Coding or programming is a process of creating codes to instruct a computer to perform a specific task.

To communicate with computer, programmers use computer language which is known as programming language.

Syntax is a set of rules that we need to follow when we write a computer program.

Examples of programming language are C, C++, C#, Python, PHP, Java, JavaScript, R, F#,