About Programming

Computers only understand zeroes and ones, but people cannot work with only zeroes and ones. Programming languages bridge that gap.

A programming language is a way to write programs that is understandable by mortal humans. Programmers can write programs in a programming language, and then that program is translated to zeroes and ones for the computer to understand. Programming languages are what allow programmers to write programs without having to deal in zeroes and ones.

The important takeaway here is that programming languages are for people. They're not for computers. Computers just care that it gets zeroes and ones; it doesn't care how the zeroes and ones get to it. The entire purpose of programming languages is that programmers can understand their programs, and that other programmers can also understand that program.

There are many programming languages in the world. Some languages are better for some problems, and other languages are better for other problems. The language we're using in this course is JavaScript. This is important to know because when you look for solutions online (which you will be doing), you should include "JavaScript" as part of your search, so that you'll find solutions in the right language.