What is Coding?

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This is kind of a tricky question to answer, but we’ll do our best! We’ll go over the basics of what coding is and how even how you can explain coding to someone else!

One Minute Answer

(This is for when you only have a few moments and want a basic idea of what coding is)

Coding is how you tell a computer what and when to do something. Computers can only do what we tell (code) them to do, so you must list each and everything, even if it seems obvious to you.

Coding Analogy

Building off the one minute answer, we can now add some more depth and details with this analogy.

Coding a computer is kind of like writing a recipe. However, instead of a person following your directions, a computer is. The computer is using your recipe (code) to solve problems and run programs. The computer “reads” each step of your recipe (code) and follows it EXACTLY. Since a computer can’t think for itself, only follow instructions, your recipe (code) must include everything someone would need to know about each instruction. For instance, if a recipe says, “add 1 cup of sugar,” it assumes you know where the sugar is, how to get sugar from a store, what you use to measure the sugar, what to do if you spill the sugar, etc. When you’re writing your recipe (code) for a computer, you can’t assume any of those things. That’s why sometimes a problem develops in our code. We don’t realize the first time that we left one of those steps out, and the computer can’t figure it out on it’s own.

A Little More in Depth

Below are a few more details about coding that can help you understand what coding means. Some people will be interested to know more, but for others, the recipe writing analogy will be enough.

The way we tell computers what to do is through binary code. Binary code is made up of 1’s and 0’s in different combinations. These combinations represent different instructions for a computer.
Because there are millions or even billions of combinations, Programming Languages were developed. Programming Languages allow us to write code (using words, symbols or blocks), instead of writing out all of the 1’s and 0’s. Each Programming Language has it’s own rules and a program that translates our code into binary code for a computer to understand.
Different Programming Languages work better for different things: web development, apps, desktop software, etc.
Even with Programming Languages that make it easier to write code than writing out each binary combination, problems still arise, and coders must use their logic and analytical skills to solve these problems.

So, did that help? Does coding make a little more sense? Did you use any of our suggestions to teach others about coding? Let us know!

If you want info on how to learn to code, check out all of the classes we’re currently offering here.