Getting Started

What Is ‘Computer Programming’?

Understanding the concept of Computer Programming will come easy to some people but not so easy to others, it all depends on your experience. To put it quite simply, Computer Programming is the process of writing the source code for an applications. The source code is written in a Programming Language. This code will tell the application to carry out a task depending on what code has been written. It is used a lot in the business industry to automate tasks and save time. If you don’t quite understand, then think about training a dog to sit. You can program the dog to sit when you say the word “sit”, just like you could program an application to add two numbers together when you click a button.
The basic concept of computer programming can be explained in many different ways, so many that you could be here for another week reading them! Just think about the way that it has been explained here and then take a look at some of the applications on your computer. They all carry out tasks when you click something or do something, they have been programmed to do that in a particular programming language. Some will be more complicated than others but they will all be made up of source code. If you still don’t fully understand the concept of Computer Programming then don’t worry, as you learn your first language you will start to understand it more.

Where Do I Start?

The most common question asked by anybody new to computer programming is “What language is the best to start with?“. Many people will tell you to jump straight into it by learning a more advanced language such as C++ or Java, others will tell you to start with a more dated language such as C. In my personal opinion, the best programming language to begin learning is Visual Basic .NET. VB.NET is a really good language to learn for a beginner because it requires no previous experience in programming. The Syntax used in VB.NET is simple and very easy to understand. Learning Visual Basic will give you a basic understanding of how computer programming works and is also really entertaining! Although VB.NET is a good place to start, I would not recommend using it for too long. More advanced languages have a more advanced syntax and spending all of your time using VB.NET could make it harder to move onto the more advanced languages in the future.
Although every programming language has a different syntax, most programming languages are similar. The first language that you learn will be the hardest language that you learn because the concept will be new to you. After learning your first language, you will have an understanding of how computer progamming works and that will help you a lot when it comes to learning other languages. If you chose a language such as C++ with a more complicated syntax then it is going to be very confusing and hard for you to understand if you do not have any prior experience. The first language that you choose to learn is completely your choice, but we stronly recommend that you begin with VB.NET.

Let’s Begin!

If you feel that you understood the information above then you should be ready to begin learning your first computer programming language. Here at How To Start Programming, new tutorials are uploaded every single week. The tutorials are uploaded to the official YouTube Channel and then the source code for the tutorial is posted here. The tutorials on this website are not all that we have to offer, we will be uploading new tutorials frequently and introducing new programming languages to you on a regular basis so please make sure to bookmark our website and keep checking for more content. Navigate to any of the programming langages located in the navigation bar to begin taking the tutorials, good luck!