How to Write a Software Program

To non-programmers, computers may seem vastly more intelligent than people. Actually, a computer is not very smart. In fact, a computer can only do what it has been told to do. It will not do anything less or anything more than it is told. It cannot make assumptions or guess what someone means. Instead, someone must feed instructions to it. Those instructions are software programs.

Instructions

1. Outline exactly what you want your computer to do. You cannot make assumptions, and neither can the computer. If you want to write a program that will play a game, you must know and clearly outline every single rule in the game and every possibility of what can happen in the game.

2. Select a programming language. There are thousands of computer programming languages that are written to do different tasks. Some are easier for people to understand and some are more difficult, filled with symbols and cryptic instructions. A very common programming language used by people just learning how to write programs is Visual Basic, made by Microsoft.

3. Obtain and install your programming language. It will be either a compiled language (like C++) or an interpreted language (like Visual Basic). As part of the installation, you will load a compiler or interpreter onto your computer. This will enable you to convert the instructions you write into ones and zeros that the computer will understand.

4. Learn the syntax of the programming language that you have selected. In some cases, as with Visual Basic, you can do most of the programming simply by clicking on various buttons and symbols. In other cases, more complex languages will require you to type instructions in basic text that will later be converted into something that the computer can understand. These basic instructions that you write are called source code.

5. Compile the source code that you have written. This is done with the compiler or interpreter that you have installed. This process often generates errors that you will have to go back and fix in your source code before the code can be compiled into something that the computer will understand.

6. Once you are successful with the compiling process, there will be a program file that can be understood by the computer. Run, or execute, your program to see the results.