6 Key Concepts Of Programming Language
Every Programmer should know these concepts.
Learning programming not only helps you to develop programs but also exercises your brain and helps to develop your thinking capacity. Learning programming is easy and quite helpful for our life. Today, I am writing 6 major points you need to know as a programmer. Here are six key concepts every programmer should know.
- Data Structure and Algorithm
The modern world is the world of data and information. There are millions of data we programmers need to manage. One of the key techniques to manage our huge data and to process it is a data structure.
Data structure is a particular way of organizing data in a computer so that it can be used effectively and an algorithm is a finite sequence of well-defined instructions, typically used to solve a class of specific problems or to perform a computation. The Algorithms are important to implement data structure more accurately and get the desired result. It is an important concept every programmer should know.
Just take an example of a dictionary to understand more clearly. Think of a dictionary where the words are arranged randomly. Now, you need to find the meaning of ‘algorithm’. How can you find it? If you are lucky enough you might find it quickly. But if you aren’t then it will take hours to find it. Thousands of pages you need to turn to find the meaning. The word might be in the starting, middle, or on the last page. You might take a whole day to find the meaning of a single word. Isn’t that difficult? Now, here comes the work of data structure. If the words were arranged alphabetically then it could be easy to find a word. A dictionary is an example of data structure. All the words are alphabetically arranged. To find the word algorithm you just need to go to the ‘A’ section and search alphabetically. You will find it within a second. Now, what is an algorithm? The words are arranged alphabetically, how you need an algorithm to fetch them. To find the word ‘algorithm’ you went to the ‘A’ section, it is an algorithm you used. I hope you are clear now about the data structure and algorithm.
2. Variables, constants, operators, and data types
You need a container to store something. In programming that container is a variable and a constant. They two are different from one another. Variables are simply the container where the values are stored temporarily during the program execution. User input or any other value or data used during the program execution is stored in a variable. You can alter the variable’s value anytime as per your program requirement.
While constants are the fixed value that doesn’t change during the entire execution of a program. Once you store the value in it then it cannot be changed. The value is fixed throughout the program. A constant can be classified into two types. One is a user-defined constant another is a pre-defined constant such as PI. A user-defined constant is defined once in a program and it remains the same throughout the program. You can’t alter it.
Operators are the mathematical function or simply a symbol that performs an action on the variables or constant. It performs an action to our data according to our requirements. There are three types of operators that programmers use: arithmetic operators. relational operators. logical operators.
Data types are a classification of data that tells the compiler or interpreter how the programmer intends to use the data. Some of the important data types are string, integer, boolean, float, etc. To understand more clearly let’s take an example. 1 is an integer while 1.001 is float but if you include a quote i.e. ‘1’ is a string. It simply tells what type of data it is.
3. Syntax
Syntax refers to the rules that define the structure of a language. It is simply the grammar of the programming language. Without syntax, the meaning or semantics of a language is nearly impossible to understand. Each and every programming language has its own syntax. Although you have used the programming concept correctly, if the syntax is incorrect then your program won’t work. Let’s take an example of the C and C++ language.
C language
printf(“Hello World”);
C++ language
count<<” Hello World”;
Just see the way how you print the text using two different programming languages. Output is the same but the way you used to print is different. It is due to the syntax of the language.
4. Control Structure
Control structures are required for flow control in a program. It controls the program flow. A control structure thus offers the possibility of executing program parts only under certain conditions or of repeating program parts. The basic Control Structures in programming languages are:
i. Conditionals (or Selection): It is used to execute one or more statements if a condition is met. If else statement, switch case are the examples of a conditional structure.
ii. Loops (or Iteration): The purpose of a loop is to repeat a statement a certain number of times or while a condition is fulfilled. For Loop, Do While loop, etc are examples of LOOP.
5. Data Flow
It is another important concept in programming. It is very important to understand how data needs to flow through your program before you start writing your code. If you don’t know about data flow then you gonna be in huge problem. It also analysis the possible values a variable can hold at various points in a program. How those values move through the program, how there are used is what means data flow. Each and every programming language has its own data flow technique.
6. Programming paradigms Concepts
A programming paradigm is a style, or “way,” of programming. It is a way how you write your programs. In a simple language, it is a framework for programming. Some of the basic programming paradigms are given in the below picture. Paradigms are important because they define a programming language and how it works. A programming paradigm is a way of thinking about and structuring a program’s functionality. Programming paradigms differ from one another, for example in how the program’s execution and control are defined and what components the programs consist of.
These are the main 6 basic and important concepts every programmer should know. If you want to learn more about programming and why it is important for you to learn programming, you can find it here.