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

Declaring and initializing variables

When writing programs, we continuously work with data. As we are using this data, we need a way to keep track of it. To do this, we use variables. Let's look at how this works in the following sections.

Understanding variables

To understand what a variable is, we can start with some code where we assign a value to a variable:

x = 13

Here, we have the value 13, which is a whole number. Usually, in programming, we refer to these as integers as they can be both positive and negative. Different programming languages treat integer values differently. Most languages will specify how much memory an integer will use. Let's assume that this size is 4 bytes, which is a common size used to store an integer value. Remember that one byte is 8 bits and that each bit can be either 0 or 1. With 4 bytes, we have 4 times 8 bits, which is 32 zeros or ones, at our disposal.

To store 13 in the computer's memory, the programming language...