Book Image

Computer Programming for Absolute Beginners

By : Joakim Wassberg
4 (1)
Book Image

Computer Programming for Absolute Beginners

4 (1)
By: Joakim Wassberg

Overview of this book

Learning how to code has many advantages, and gaining the right programming skills can have a massive impact on what you can do with your current skill set and the way you advance in your career. This book will be your guide to learning computer programming easily, helping you overcome the difficulties in understanding the major constructs in any mainstream programming language. Computer Programming for Absolute Beginners starts by taking you through the building blocks of any programming language with thorough explanations and relevant examples in pseudocode. You'll understand the relationship between computer programs and programming languages and how code is executed on the computer. The book then focuses on the different types of applications that you can create with your programming knowledge. You'll delve into programming constructs, learning all about statements, operators, variables, and data types. As you advance, you'll see how to control the flow of your programs using control structures and reuse your code using functions. Finally, you'll explore best practices that will help you write code like a pro. By the end of this book, you'll be prepared to learn any programming language and take control of your career by adding coding to your skill set.
Table of Contents (19 chapters)
1
Section 1: Introduction to Computer Programs and Computer Programming
6
Section 2: Constructs of a Programming Language
7
Chapter 5: Sequence – The Basic Building Block of a Computer Program
14
Section 3: Best Practices for Writing High-Quality Code
Appendix B: Dictionary
A
B
C
D
E
F
G
H
I
J
K
L
M
N
O
P
R
S
T
U
V
W

Functions in action

If we again go back to our application for turning on the lights outside our house and focus on the application running on our phone, we will see that we have at least two distinct things we need to do over and over again.

We will need to get our current position and we need to calculate our distance to home so we know whether it is time to turn on the lights or not.

These are two distinct tasks, and they are very well suited to being packaged up into two different functions, namely, get_current_position and calculate_distance_to_home, as shown in the following figure:

Figure 8.3: main_application calls two different functions

Figure 8.3 – main_application calls two different functions

This diagram shows that we have a block that we call main_application. This is a function, and it calls a function called get_current_position that will return the longitude and latitude, indicating the current position of the phone. Equipped with this information, main_application can now make...