If you want to get into coding, there are chances that you’ll come across several problems that could be discouraging, mainly in tutorials owing to your lack of previous experiences in programming. Even theprogramming classes for beginners might appear difficult if you are not aware of the below-mentioned basic programming concepts.
1. 8 Programming Concepts You Should Know in 2017
If you want to get into coding, there are chances that you’ll
come across several problems that could be discouraging,
mainly in tutorials owing to your lack of previous experiences in
programming. Even theprogramming classes for beginners
might appear difficult if you are not aware of the below-
mentioned basic programming concepts.
Initially, several questions come to mind. Like how to do
programming or which programming courses for Beginners
could be helpful. There are several online sources that would
help you with the later question; here we shall discuss the
former query. What is computer programming?
2. Computer programming or in short programming is a process
that leads from a formulation of a computing problem to be run
by computer programs. A source code is written in one or many
programming languages.
3. Top 8 Programming Concepts You Should Know in 2017 for beginners:
1. Variables
I want to start with first programming concepts as a variable.
They are like boxes can hold various things at various times.
This is one of the most basic elements of programming. In
short, a way to refer something such that you could use it in a
line of code:
You might develop a variable to store age of a person and
call it ‘age’
May develop a variable to store user’s name and call it
‘username’
You can develop a variable to count how many times a thing
happened and call it ‘counter’
You would develop a variable to store position and call it an
‘index’
Variables are changeable. A user’s name could be different
every time when one code runs. A list of items could have other
items added to it, or removed.
They can be combined as well: an age might be calculated
based on a birth date, here both age and birth date are two
different variables. This is the first basic programming concepts
you will come across if starts to learn to program.
2. Strings, integers and other types of data
A string is a series of characters.
You have different types of variables, which keep on changing.
The basic types include:
Numbers — integers and floats (they have decimal places)
Text — basically called strings and indicated by quotation
marks, e.g.“17 August”
Lists or arrays indicated by square brackets and commas,
e.g. [“Manchester”, “Glasgow”, “Paris”]
Dictionaries or dicts normally mentioned by curly brackets, colons and
commas, e.g. {“Age” : 23, “Name”: “Jane”}
This is important as problems could occur when code gets
4. information in a wrong format. For instance, you can’t do a
calculation with strings, or in several cases, mix text with
numbers.
In such cases programming involves instructing the code to
treat ‘7’ as a number and not as a string, or to convert the
string ‘seven’ to its numerical version. Computers need exact
instruction to perform.
3.classes and #ids and selectors
Selectors like .nav permits you to find or control items in a web
page.
HTML code applies the class= and id= to identify particular
types of content and make it possible to edit with other code.
For instance, you might have such a code in a web page:
<div class=”article”>
<ul class=”nav”>
<h2 class=”subhead”>
<div id=”footer”>
There are about 3 ways in which, these classes and ids become
useful:
1. They can be styled by making use of CSS
2. They could be changed using Java programming language and other
languages
3. It could be identified and written using languages like Ruby,
Python and PHP
In many cases, this is done using selectors. These selectors
mention a class with a period, and an id with a hash, as shown
below:
.article (for class=”article”)
#footer (for id=”footer”)
4. Functions, methods
Functions and methods are like titles. You only need to provide
5. the ingredients.
Functions and methods are basically one-word formula to
perform things that would otherwise take several lines of code.
For instance:
len in certain languages means ‘give me length of the thing I
specify’
split in certain languages means ‘split this thing into one or
many based on a criteria I specify’
To do that, function requires an ingredient called an argument
or parameter, and the method is fixed to an ingredient called an
object.
The difference between methods and functions is minute and
can’t be explored here.
One basic useful thing about functions is that you could define
your own in your code.
5. Arguments or parameters
Arguments are necessary to make your formula.
Functions and methods need ingredients to work, each called an
argument or parameter.
These appear in parentheses that follows the name of the
function.E.g.
len(“Paul”)
len(myname)
The len function will give you the length of whatever argument
is mentioned in the parentheses.
In the first instance there is a string “Paul”. The result here is 4
(4 characters).
In the second instance the argument is a
variable — myname — so the result will vary based on what
that variable has at that moment. If myname is “Bradshaw”, the
result will be 8 (8 characters).
Some functions and methods use above one parameter, each
one separated by a comma. And some parameters are optional.
At several times, the parentheses are left empty like so: ready
(). Again, this should be mentioned in the documentation.
6. 6. Libraries
Libraries are for collections of many functions and methods
which help you to do more than you can with only the basics of
the coding language.
If you consider a problem, it appears as if someone has created
a library to deal with it: sketching a map; getting information
from a number of web pages; transforming a document;
creating animations or effects.
Hence, there is a useful tip to search for your problem, the
language you’re learning or using, and the word ‘library’, e.g.
‘javascript mapping library’.
7. Lists/arrays and dictionaries/dicts
Lists are like a row of people, you can find items by their
position.
Lists and dictionaries are special types of information which
could be very useful in programming but at the same time quite
confusing for laymen.
The terms vary; in some languages, lists are called arrays, and
dictionaries are called dicts.
A list or array is but a list of items, which appear like this:
[“Asia”, “Africa”, “Europe”]
The contents list could be one or more of any of the data types
mentioned above.
Lists are quite useful to:
Store information and to
Repeat actions.
A dictionary has both labels and values. Dictionaries are also a
form of list, but with a main difference that they are a list of
pairs. Each pair has a label (known as a key) and a value,
connected by a colon, for instance:
“Age”: 24
Consider dictionary as a collection of words with a definition.
But you could also consider it as column headings (age, name,
location) and values (18, Sarah, Chicago).
Each pair is next separated by commas and the whole is placed
in a list in curly brackets, as shown below:
7. {“Age” : 23, “Name”: “Jane”}
This is very useful for storing data that has more than one
label. For instance, you might save a list of ages as a very
simple list. But if you want to connect each age to a name or
location, then you will need a dictionary.
This could be behind the logic of data format JSON, a number of
APIs use this format.
Very much like lists, dictionaries also contain various types of
data under each key, which includes lists and dictionaries as
well.
8. Objects
With our final concept from top programming concepts Objects,
I think after it you are reddy to learn new language.
Lego objects could only be used with another lego objects, and
not with Duplo objects.
The trem ‘object’ in programming is something which could be
edited or used in some way by the program, like a variable that
has an age, name, list, etc.
When the term ‘object’ is preceded by another it could be
annoying. For instance, you must have read about a ‘jQuery
object’ or an ‘lxml object’.
When objects are described such a way it means that the object
in question can be modified or used by code from a library:
jQuery methods, could be used on a ‘jQuery object’; lxml
methods could be used on a ‘lxml object’.
Keep coding! hope so you will learn these basic Programming concepts and stay
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