& programming concepts
introduction#
i’ve been coding & programming for about 3 years now & i think i am safe to say i know a thing or two
i merged knowledge & research to expose some coding & programming concepts
i won’t be talking about development, just coding & progamming related stuff - see below
coding is the way to implement things, giving instructions to computers & learn how things works, e.g. coding sorting algorithms
programming is the way to use coding skills to create something or to solve a problem using coding experience, e.g. programming a reservation planning
development (by developpers, obviously) regroup processes like evaluating, conceiving, programming, documenting, testing, etc. a solution, e.g. developping a webapp
languages levels#
programming languages can be seperated in various ways, one of which is their proxmity to the computer language
low-level#
low-level languages aim to be near computer language
their code give computer hardware instructions to perform manipulations on its components
practicing a low-level programming language makes you learn a lot about how components & their communications works
they are used to control computer’s operational semantics & provide little or no abstraction of programming ideas
since they are dealing w/ the hardware, the code can change from a computer to another depending of its hardware specification or architecture
they are oftenly non human-readable & have a relatively slow learning curve
those languages also let the programmer a wide control on storage, memory or cpu usage
the assembly language or the machine language/binary code are two types of low-level languages, e.g. assembler
they are commonly used to write kernels & drivers
high-level#
closer to human language, high-level programming languages are for every day coding or programming stuff
they help developers by avoiding to manually give instructions to components and focus on their projects
when comparing the performance of a low-level & a high-level language for the same task, the low-level one will be much faster: it requires little interpretation by the computer
all high-level languages require their code to be understandable by the computer, since they are human readable at first
an interpreter handle the translation of this code to bytecode
paradigm#
paradigms are the concepts used to structure & to think about code
two main paradigms substain: imperative & declarative oftenly called “functional”
these two main paradigms has derived types of paradigms
programming languages can follow one single paradigm or more paradigms multi paradigm
imperative#
the imperative paradigm is based on instructing the machine on how to change its state
to do so, the programmer gives explicit instructions, the how: do X then Y ~ to get Z
procedural#
the procedural paradigm is based on the imperative one
procedural code instructs the device on how to finish a task in logical given steps (procedures)
in other words: the code gives a sequence of instructions to the computer
the code can be human read from top to bottom whereas the machine will look for procedures inside the code
it is the most known paradigm, using functions, local or global variables, doing parameters passing, etc.
object-oriented#
object-oriented paradigm is based on objects, which are a structure that contain data or code
objects are reusable pieces of code, like a blueprint, which can have instances of it
considering the “Persons” object, each instance of this object would have the same patern: a name, a surname, an age, etc.
i took back an example from my combodo itop artcle
methods can be called on the instances to modify them or do a specific action
declarative#
the declarative paradigm describe the goal, giving the wanted outcome rather than how to acheive it
the programmers giving the what: give me Z ~ using X & Y
declarative based paradigm get rid of control flow e.g. if/else statements or loops
functional#
functional programming is all about functions
functions, like in math, can have functions in parameters, & can return a function
following this idea, to save the state of a function & use it later, there are closures
there is plenty to learn: high order functions, pure functions, currying, monads, etc.
functional programming is a good way to think about data immutability, apart from its unusual code approach
typing#
programming languages has some differences in their way to declare variables
they can be regrouped as so according to how they type them
statically typed#
statically typed languages, or strongly typed
are a way to think about the type of variable the programmer is using when coding
when declarating a variable, it requires to specify its type (list, strings, integer, etc.) to make a memory record
as so, the programmer as much control on its memory usage & what its variables will become
side note: the typescript language is the statically typed version of javascript, a dynamically typed languge
dynamically typed#
dynamically typed languages
are “made” to be quicker since all types a variable can become an other type of variable
the same list variable car become a string & after a interger in the same execution
python & javascript are two main languages that are dynamically typed