Programming Languages

 

Scratch is an interactive website for beginner programmers and taught me some valuable information about how computers process code. I was able to watch a couple of short tutorial videos and immediately being building my program. One issue I ran into during this process was learning how to make a scrolling background. After a quick search on YouTube, I was able to find a video that explained each step in detail, enabling my program to have a scrolling background (YouTube.com, 2019). Once I learned where the different code instructions were in the interface, adding the character sprite and animating it was reasonably straightforward. The link to my scratch program can be found below in the References page.

                As someone who has little to no experience in programming, this lesson gave me some valuable insights. Scratch taught me how precise your instructions need to be for a program to work. Not just the wording or numbers, but also the order in which the instructions are input. Scratch also taught me how easy it could be to create a program using imagination and a free-to-use website, which I wish I had growing up.

                Scratch, compared to the participation activities in our textbook, was much easier to understand due to the drag-and-drop user interface. Scratch would be most effective in a teaching/learning environment but not in the professional or business world. While Scratch is great for creating cartoon programs that perform basic animations, high-level programming languages such as Python allow programmers to write code for basically anything. I found machine language to be the most difficult to understand because all instructions were restricted to 0's and 1's (Vahid, F. and Lysecky, S., 2017). Writing a simple addition program in machine language took me some time to figure out. Assembly language simplifies machine language by giving the 0’s and 1’s text representation. For example, the word “input” is used instead of the machine language code “01” (Vahid, F. and Lysecky, S., 2017). This was easier for me to understand because I grew up using DOS on an Apple IIe computer back in the 1980s. The high-level programming language Python is widely popular today due to its ease of readability and object-oriented approach. High-level programming languages are automatically converted to assembly/machine language before running, making them very user-friendly.

                Machine language is effective because Central Processing Units (CPUs) only understand 1's and 0's, which machine language uses. Programmers would not type code in machine language but could use an assembly language, such as DOS, to type their instructions in a textual format that is easier to read and understand by humans. High-level languages such as Python, Java, and C++ are used everywhere today. Some examples are software and website design and game development.

                I believe the most popular programming language right now is JavaScript. JavaScript is used in web development, game development, mobile apps, and building web servers. JavaScript allows coders to animate graphics, add clickable buttons on websites, and control the behavior of web pages. While popular programming languages like Python are used to create, JavaScript is still needed to add functionality. 

Scratch program link: https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/560824216

 

 

References

Vahid, F., & Lysecky, S. (2017). Computing technology for all. Retrieved from zybooks.zyante.com/

Hackingtons. (2019, June 6). Scratch programming: How to make a scrolling background. [Video File]. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IWhuoL4_8Lo