Conceptual Programming: Conceptual Programming: Learn Programming the old way!

CONTENTS

1. What is Programming.

2. Understanding computers.

3. Dealing with Math.

4. Algorithms.

5. Flowcharts.

6. Handling Instructions.

7. Combining Algorithms and Flowcharts.

8. Designing Programs.

9. Dealing with complexities.

10. Pseudo Code.

1. What is Programming?

If we look at the word, it means to Program something. Something can be taken as computers. In relation to computers, a program means a set of instructions. Instructions mean providing guidance to do a job. And a job can be related to a task. Like picking up a book or adding two numbers.

When we program computers we write instructions. But as usual, a computer only understands binary which is either 0 or 1. So when ordering a computer to do a task, how does it understand the order? And how does it even do it by 0’s and 1’s?

The answer lies in the Programming Technique. When we program computers, we define a set of instructions. These instructions have different values that can be used to order a computer to do a task. Like addition or other arithmetic (since it won't be able to pick up a book by itself unless provided such hardware). A computer will then do only that task for which it is instructed. Nothing else.

For example, we order a computer to do an addition of 2 and 3.  But a computer only understands binary. So we decode 2 and 3 into binary, we get 10 and 11. A computer is made up of various hardware but here we only need the CPU or the Central Processing Unit. It has Accumulator (place for work in the CPU), ALU(for arithmetic purposes), various buses(to carry data), Registers(to hold data), RAM(for writing and reading data). We won’t be needing ROM as we already have data as 10 and 11.

So, we have to add these two numbers. First, we got to store these. But exactly in what? The memory of course. But to keep things simple for you to understand, let us store these two numbers in the Registers. A CPU has lot of registers, let us take two of them and call them R1 and R2. We store 10 in R1 and 11 in R2.

But wait? We just can’t do that, we have to physically mention the numbers for insertion. So here we use an instruction named MOV. It’s short for MOVE. We can use it to move values to Registers. Like,

MOV R1,2

MOV R2,3.

These are actually called Assembly Language instructions, the lowest level language that a CPU directly understands.

We have 2 and 3 loaded into Registers of the CPU. Now we can simply add them. We will have to use another instruction named ADD. It’s short for ADDITION. It works like,

ADD R1,R2

And it’s done. We successfully added two numbers using CPU language.

We can also output the result into an OUTPUT PORT (like a digital display) like a PORT A with a port address. Let us say we stored the result in R3. We just write,

OUT R3,A.

That’s all. The CPU will output the result from the R3 to there.

You can call this a type of providing instructions to the CPU to do a task. Or Programming. This is the simplest task possible. You can learn enormous tasks and provide order to the CPU to multiply numbers, read them a million times, edit images, hack servers and fly rockets to mars. That’s mostly being done.

But evolution happened and we came across different programming languages. Like C, at low level, C++ at low and high level, Java at high level. We have even designed a simple human level language called Python (an intense high level language) with simplest readable code.

So, what