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

Appendix A: How to Translate the Pseudocode into Real Code

The code examples in this book have, for the most part, been written using pseudocode, as the aim of the book is to give you an understanding of what programming is, rather than focusing on any particular language.

To be able to write code, you will need to use a real language, and here we will look at some of the more popular ones and see how the code used in this book would translate into these languages.

The languages we will look at are as follows:

  • C++
  • C#
  • Java
  • JavaScript
  • PHP
  • Python

For each language, we will start with a short introduction.

You will not be able to start to write your very own programs just from these short examples, but you will get a feel for these languages, and maybe seeing them like this will help you decide what language you want to learn first.

Before we look at the different languages, we will have a couple of pseudocode examples. These examples will...