What is Coding?

            

Definition of Coding

We may not have reached into the future where we can travel in flying cars yet, but we have advanced leaps and bounds into a high-tech society. Nowadays, everything is computer-aided- from your alarm clock to your coffee machine to automated cars and even your home lights (Hi Alexa! Ok, Google!).

None of these would have been possible without computers, and the language that runs them - is coding.

Coding, in simpler terms, means feeding our commands in the computer in a language the computer understands, so that the computer can carry out the said command, and perform the task.

It is, therefore, not an exaggeration to say that coding runs the future that we are living in the present.

What is coding?

I'm sure you've come across the hype surrounding coding, and by now, know that it is related to processing and building up the information that runs our computer and artificial intelligence aided gadgets.

Coding, in simpler terms, is the language used by computers to understand our commands and, therefore, process our requests.

Programming is a list of codes arranged in a sequence that results in the completion of work.

Take, for example, the following analogy - you click on a video app on your smartphones, and it plays a video.

A program is what brings about the completion of the task 'playing the said video.'

The program is made up of a series of smaller tasks that direct your smartphone to do the above task and bring it to completion. Each smaller task is written in code, i.e., the computer language, and that is what coding is all about.

How does coding work?

Computers and artificial intelligence are built up of, mainly, transistors; and these transistors act as the 'brain' of the computer. Hence, the computer only understands the language of 'on' and 'off,' guided by the transistor switches. The on and off are represented by 1 and 0, respectively, in a binary system. Therefore, your computer and every other gadget run on an infinite sequence of binary codes.

These binary codes form the machine code, with each number directing the machine (your computer) to change a sequence in its memory.

Programming languages make the binary code language of the computers more manageable by translating our commands into binary code.

Coding means using the programming language to get the computer to behave as desired.

Each line of the code is a set of instructions for the computer. A set of codes form a script, and a set or dozens of sets, form a program. 

Difference between coding and programming

An essential distinction between coding and programming is that programming is the higher level of coding that assembles a set of instructions (codes) to allow your computer to carry out the task.