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Many of you may not believe me when I tell you that programming is within the grasp of the layman. Maybe you’re one of those people who, when you see a screen full of code, your mind just shuts down and goes blank. Well I’m here to tell you that the tools available to master programmers are available to you for just a few weekly payments of an hour. It will take your time in complete mental focus. I won’t be one to tell you that you can Learn PHP in 24 Hours or 10 minutes to learn PERL, as the books intimate. But, with a solid investment of your time you WILL reap the rewards of time savings from the efficiencies gained with your programming. Custom computer programs are no longer the sole domain of a team of programmers or a hermited mole-like technophile. You can easily build a programming environment in an afternoon and be mucking with variables, looping structures, and logical operators that same day. Like any endeavor it will take years of effort to be a master. Let me explain a few things to the uninitiated about programming that you may not know. Simple things that reveal how programming is done in this day and age.

A few simple truths about programs and code:

Common code is stored in plain text files

You may not be familiar with plain text files. They don’t offer much to the layman, but to the programmer they are the keys to the kingdom. For todays popular languages all start with their source code being typed into a plain text file. It may be renamed to not have the “.txt” extension, but it is still plain text. Word documents (.doc) ARE NOT plain text files. Think “notepad” if you are a Windows user. Plain text files do not have formatting, the raw stored type is just text.

Code is edited with plain text editors

Source code is typed into those text files using simple text editors. Now many complicated IDE’s are used but for the beginner a simple no-nonsense plain text editor will be the best for learning. It won’t trip you up if you completely comprehend your simple text editor. Once you know what you’re doing, learn a real text editor.

Syntax is crucial

When you’re typing a letter to your mom, she might not mind if you misspell a few words or miss a punctuation point here or there. However programs require you to be nearly 100% accurate. The compiler or intrepreter, the part of the computer that figures out what you want from your program, is very picky. It may always want a semi-colon after each line. It may want indenting to be a certain number of characters. It may differentiate between upper case and lower case. The kind of bracket you use might matter. You must learn the language. Programming languages however are much easier to learn than the spoken kind. For one thing the number of terms in a programming language is much lower. Pay attention to syntax (How you type the program in).

Know your environment first

I mentioned above about building your own programming environment. Sure you can just program using web-based platforms or on remote servers, but if you didn’t set it up you will continue for some time to struggle with the question of “Is this problem my code or my setup of the programming environment?” So not only should you go through the basic programming tutorials for your language of choice, you should also follow tutorials on setting up your environment. Whether it’s PHP, Python, Perl, or Prolog (or some other language not starting with “p”) it helps you to know how things are installed and configured. As a beginning programmer you will see error messages, and your job will be to continue hacking at the code until errors are abated.

Persistence is paramount

If you do not have the willingness to persist when a problem gets tough, you will fail. You will fall short of your goal you are trying to achieve. This holds true for any endeavor in life, and no less in the task of a programmer. Remember that when you’re up against a wall and you can’t figure out a problem. Take a break. Come back at it from another angle. Keep doing it until it’s done. You will learn and grow and improve if you just don’t give up.