What is programming? One answer is, Getting a computer to do stuff. That is true and we will learn how to get a computer to perform tasks, make calculations, and do stuff. But programming could also be defined as training our minds to think logically, orderly and sequentially. We need to learn to make explicit want we understand intuitively. For example, we may intuitively know what an even number is, we can give examples of one, but we must discover an explicit, exact test to determine whether a number is even or not.

When people first start to use computers they sometimes begin to feel that the computer has a mind of its own. They click something expecting one result and get another. Why is this? The first thing we have to know is that behind all the behavior of a computer lie programming instructions. And those instructions were written by people. So in fact, a human being decided that the click you made should cause the result it does. The computer does not have a mind of its own; it is only as smart as the person who programmed it.

Actually if a computer were a person, it would be a very dumb person indeed. For example, most people would understand a request like "Please put the book on the table." In fact if someone did not understand this, it would surely be cause for concern. But just try to tell a computer to put a book on a table. It would have no idea what you mean. (And even if it did, it doesn't have a way to move books around!) To tell a computer something as simple as this, you would first have to explain what a book is and what a table is. And then you would have to tell it how to lift the book, how high to lift it, where to move it in relation to the table and exactly where on the table to release it. As you can see, what I am describing is truly a very detailed set of instructions. These instructions could be considered a computer program. Standard computer languages are designed to tell a computer minutely detailed instruction for how to complete certain tasks. These tasks usually center around mathematical computations and displaying information on a computer screen (not moving books onto tables). In this course, we will be using a computer language to make our computer do all sorts of fun and exciting things (well, some of them are not that exciting.)

A computer program is a set of instructions that a computer can execute (carry out) one after the other. Each of these instructions is very simple. By simple I mean that it is a very small (discrete) action for the computer to do. By combining tens, hundreds or even millions of such instructions programmers can get computers to do very complex things, like simulating chemical reactions and computing the orbits of twin stars. They can also do more mundane and simple things like computing the salaries of employees and balancing financial information. But each instruction on its own does very little. Only by combining many instructions can complex actions be done. A set of such instructions is called a program. These instructions are also called the program code. These instructions are executed in order (one after the other going downward). Another way of saying "in order" is saying "in sequence" Therefore we can say a program is a set of code which is executed in sequence.

Unlike human beings, computers cannot figure out anything by themselves. This means the programmer must spell out every detail of what he or she wants the computer to do. A computer can't read anyone's mind. Expressing this idea, someone once quipped: A computer doesn't do what you want it to do, it does what you tell it to do . Therefore, be very careful what you tell it to do. A computer program could be compared to a cooking recipe for people who have no idea how to cook. A normal human recipe might have a statement like:

mix the ingredients in a bowl

a bowl is a round container
a cabinet is a shelf with doors
a counter is a flat area 3 feet higher than the ground
remove bowl from cabinet
put bowl on counter
put each ingredient in bowl
remove mixing spoon from drawer
stir contents of bowl with mixing spoon 10 times

The objects the computer uses are kept in the computer's memory. Computer memory is also called RAM ( Random Access Memory). All your programs are stored in the computer memory (RAM). When the computer is turned off or restarted the memory (RAM) gets swept clean. The harddrive of your computer works differently. Information stored there remains even after you turn the computer off. You could think of RAM as short term memory and harddrive space as long term memory.

The RAM of the computer is made up of thousands of blocks of memory. This memory is used by all the programs running on the computer. If you are running a program like Microsoft Office, then this program is using some of the blocks of memory. Each program gets assigned some blocks of memory for its use. One program should normally stay away from the memory assigned to another program.

I like to think of these blocks of memory in the computer RAM as being like a warehouse full of empty shoeboxes inside the computer. The shoeboxes are simple brown cardboard boxes without any labels. There are thousands of them. Each program gets assigned a few thousand for its use. When a program needs some computer memory, it takes down 5 or 6 boxes and labels them and starts to put things into them. These boxes are the objects the program will use. They are like for example the mixing bowl in the "recipe" above. Sometimes the program needs to open a shoebox and see what is inside. Sometimes it needs to discard what is in a certain shoebox and put something else into it. In C++ (and for that matter, in all programming languages that I know) these shoeboxes are called variables. In other words, a variable is a place in the computer's memory (RAM) where information can be stored.

All variables must have names. We can't use a variable if it has not been named. The names we give to our variables are called identifiers because they identify the place in memory where the variable is located. The identifier is usually a few letters long or it may be a short word. Just as I can reuse the same shoebox many times for many different shoes, each time removing the old shoes and replacing them with a different pair, so too I can reuse the same variable to receive different values sequentially. Because they can receive different values, and therefore change in value from time to time, they are called variables. ( The value of a variable varies. It is therefore logical to say that its value is variable. Hence, it is called a "variable")

The steps needed for creating a variable are the following: (1) have the computer take one block of memory aside, (2) give it a name, (3) put data into the memory. Now this named block of memory (our variable) can be used and reused.

Now I will demonstrate these steps in some simple C++ instructions that a computer could understand. If the programmer (that's me) wants to compute the sum of 7 and 8 in C++ he would first need to create a variable to store the sum in. In the next instruction he could put the sum into that variable.

To do the above in C++, I would write the following:

int mySum;
mySum = 7+8;

Now let's explain this code segment. The above two lines are two instructions which make the variable mySum contain the number 15. What makes it two separate instructions? The semi-colon (;) indicates the end of each instruction. By having two semi-colons I indicate that I have two instructions ( also called commands ). The fact that they are on two separate lines in not relevant. I could have two commands on one line, or one command over two lines (not recommended). The computer does not care about lines. Human readers do care about lines. Human readers find it easier to read separate lines, so programmers usually write each command on a separte line for clarity. But the computer only cares about semi-colons to separate commands.

The first instruction ( command ) is:
int mySum;

When the computer reads this line it needs to create a variable and to give it the name "mySum" (Remember, a variable is a place in computer memory, like a shoebox in our comparison). How does it do this? First it looks for some unused memory in the block of memory that has been assigned to it. When it finds this unused memory, it labels it with the name mySum. This is as if a person went into the storehouse of shoeboxes and took down an empty one and labeled it on the outside with a magic marker.

The word int is a special word in C++ which indicates that (1) a special type of memory place should be created and (2) that it should be given the name that follows the word int. This command is called a declaration because it declares ( states ) the existence of a new variable. Once you have declared a variable, you do not need to declare it again. You simply can use it by writing it again like this.
mySum = 8;
Note that I did not use the word int again. This point often confuses people. Only at the time I am creating the variable and giving it a name do I use the special word int. When I later use the variable, I simply write mySum, not int mySum.

If I were to write again int mySum ; the computer would think I wanted to create another variable with the same name as the first variable. This is not allowed and the compiler would tell me so. In general, I cannot have two variables with the same name. If I could have two variables with the same name, the computer would not know which one I meant when I wrote its name.

The name or identifier we gave to the variable is "mySum". This is simply the name I have chosen. I could have used any name to label this variable. I could have called it "george". It is a variable name of my choosing. From now on in the program, the name mySum will refer to this variable. As we said, this is like a name on the outside of a shoebox used to easily identify it. The name we choose for our variable does not affect its contents. (We will give the variable some contents in just another moment.)

In addition to int, there are other such special words in C++ which mean different things. These special words are called keywords. They are also called reserved words. Together, all the reserved words make up the C++ language. The English language has about 250,000 words. C++ has only 62 keywords; that's not too much to learn. (There is a table of all of them near the end of this chapter) We will learn to use most of these keywords.

In our case, int means that the type of memory space we are creating will be capable of containing whole numbers or integers but not decimal numbers (hence the name int, short for integer). It is as though we are creating a shoebox which can only contain one kind of shoe, like sneakers. Just as there are different types of shoeboxes some for sneakers, some larger ones for boots there are also different types of variables which can contain different kinds of contents (for example, ones that can contain decimal numbers instead of whole numbers). These variable type designators are called primitive data types because they are the most basic (or primitive) types of variables that can be created. Thus, int is a primitive data type.

The second command: mySum = 7+8;     puts a value into the variable. It assigns the value on the right side of the = sign to the variable on the left side.
In other words, it puts the value into the shoebox which is labeled "mySum." It gives the variable "mySum" the value of 7+8. Since 7+8 is 15, the variable "mySum" gets the value 15. Now my variable has some content. Since 15 is a whole number, I can put it into my variable. I cannot put a decimal number like 15.5 into my int variable. If I would, I would lose the decimal part and be left with just 15. In other words, int truncates the decimal off of a decimal number. Later we will see how to store decimal numbers in a different type of variable.

Programmers usually call any line of code which puts a value into a variable "assigning a value to a variable." Because such an instruction assigns a value to a variable, it is also called an assignment. The = sign is therefore called the assignment operator because the operation it performs is assignment. (Don't call it "equals" because this is a different concept and is covered by a different symbol! ) There are other operators that you should know. The + (plus) operator adds two numbers and the - (minus) operator subtracts. So too there is the / (division) operator and the * (multiplication) operator.

In contrast to variables, numbers like 7 or 17000 or 3.1416 are fixed, that is, their value logically cannot change. 7 is always 7 and nothing else. If 7 changes to 8, then it is no longer 7. Numbers such as these are therefore called constants because their value is constant; it never changes. They are also called literals because they represent literally what they are. We can assign a constant ( like 7 ) to a variable ( like "mySum" ) but we cannot do the reverse. ( If you think about it, it does not make any sense at all to assign a variable to a number. In fact, whatever is on the left side of the assignment operator ( = ) must be a variable and never a constant. ) Get used to the terms variable and constant and remember the difference between them.

We have seen that first we must assign a name to a variable. After this we can assign a value to the variable. These two operations together create a variable and give it an initial value. This process is a common one and is called initialization. 

Above, we initialized mySum in two lines of code. However these two steps can be combined into one line if we desire. Here is how:

int mySum = 7+8;

After initialization we can assign more values to the variable we created. We can do this any number of times. Each time the old value in the variable will be overwritten with the new value. Here is an example:

int someVariable = 4500;
someVariable = 25;
someVariable = 200;
someVariable = 1;

After these four lines of code, the variable "someVariable" will have the value 1. The 4500, the 25 and the 200 have been erased by being overwritten by 1.

If you want to create several variables in one line of code, this is made possible by using commas. Here is an example of a declaring 3 variables in one line.

int firstVar, secondVar, anotherVar;

Now I can use any or all of these variables in my program. For example, I can write:

int firstVar, secondVar, anotherVar;
firstVar=8;
secondVar=29999;
anotherVar=200;

I can also assign the value of one variable to another. In the following example I will assign the value of the variable a to the variable b.

int a, b;
a=45 ;
b=a;

int a, b, c;
a=45 ;
c=b=a;

Here is an example of what not to do. I will attempt to assign b the value of a before a has any value.

int a, b;
b=a;
a=45 ;

As we have said, int is a primitive data type. There are other primitive data types. For your future reference, here is a table of all the primitive data types along with the amount of computer memory they use (Bytes) and the maximum and minimum values they can be assigned (Range). Look this over and later I will explain each data type.

We will learn about each primitive data type above as they come up in the following chapters. But there is one thing I need to explain now. Shoeboxes are made out of cardboard, primitive data types are made out of bytes. You have probably heard the term Megabytes (MB) or Gigabytes (GB). This is how computer or camera memory is measured. 1 megabyte is about a million bytes, 1 gigabyte is about 1 billion bytes. So if your computer has 256MB of memory and an int uses 4 bytes, then you can create about 64 million ints in your program. That is a lot, but it is a finite number. (I get this number by dividing 256,000,000 bytes by the 4 bytes of one int.) You will notice that in the above chart the number of bytes for an int is not given. This is because the size of an int depends on the computer you are using. Because of this problem, we have two more primitive data types: short and long. Short is an int of at least 2 bytes and long is an int of 4 bytes. If you know you only need a small integer, you can use short. If you need a longer integer you can use the long data type. This means that really you can always use either a short or long in place of int. According to the chart, the maximum value you can assign to a short is 32,767. If you assign a value higher than this - - for example, 32,768 - - to your short variable, the number will get mangled into some other number since there is not enough space in a short for this number. If you need a larger int you can use long. Now I will show you an example of assigning a value too large to be held in a short. Notice also that I do not use any commas when I write the value to be assigned.

short someVariable = 33800;         Wrong!
long someVariable = 33800;         Right!

In the range section of the table, you will notice the words signed and unsigned. This has nothing to do with a signed or unsigned check! What it refers to is whether your int, short or long is also meant to have negative values assigned to it (numbers less than zero). If you do not want to assign your variable any negative values then you can use an unsigned long for example. The advantage of doing this is that you then can put larger values into the variable. For example, if you declare a variable of type long, the maximum value it can be assigned is 2,147,483,647 but if you declare an unsigned long then you can assign it a value of as much as 4,294,967,295 (but then you cannot assign it a negative value). The way you declare an unsigned long, short or int is by preceding it with the word unsigned. If you want a signed variable ( one that can be either positive of negative) simple write long, short or int with nothing before it ( you can also write signed before the data type, but this is the default anyway so it is not necessary).

Here is an example of the wrong and right way to do this:

long someVariable = 3380000000;         Wrong!
unsigned long someVariable = 3380000000;         Right!

Here is another example of an error:

unsigned long someVariable = -338000;         Wrong!
long someVariable = -338000;         Right!

Now we should discuss what are legal identifiers (variable names). In algebra we used variable names like "x" and "y". In computer programming, we prefer names that are more descriptive of the purpose for which the variable is being used. Some examples of variable names are "studentCount" (for the number of students in a class or whatever), price (for the price of some good), age, firstname. You might notice that the variable names are always nouns (never verbs). Also, if I want a two word name I capitalize the first letter of the second word as in studentCount. So too, capitalize the second and third words of three word variable names. In reality, these rules are really just strong recommendations; the computer will let you use any string of letters.

But there are some hard and fast rules. For example:

1. The first character of the variable must be either a letter, an underscore(_) or a dollar ($).
2. Any character thereafter can be either a letter, an underscore (_), a dollar($) or a digit.
3. You can't use any other symbols or key strokes ( and no spaces either! ).
4. Variable names are case sensitive ( apple is not the same as aPple).
5. You cannot use keywords as variable names.

So that you don't accidentally use a keyword as your variable name, here is a table of all the keywords in C++. So remember: Don't use any of the following words as your variable names (identifiers).

To help clarify what are valid variable names, I made a sample of some valid and invalid variable names.

Terms in this chapter:

Exercises

1. Describe the difference between a short and a long.
2. Describe the difference between a variable and a constant.
3. Initialize one short variable and two long variables (you can choose their names).
4. Change the value of the above variables to some different value.
5. Declare another short variable and assign it the value of your first short variable.
6. Add two literals and store their sum in a variable.
7. Add two variables and store their sum in a third variable.
8. Multiply two variables and store their product in a third.
9. Divide two variables and store their quotient in a third.
10. We saw above that you can assign the value of one variable to another variable. We did this like this:
    int a, b;
    a=45 ;
    b=a;
    In this case b was undefined until I assigned it a's value (b=a). If b had been inialized with another value, it would be overwritten and lost at this point. This presents an obstacle if I want to exchange the values of a for b and b for a. Solve this problem. Write a series of commands so that b is assigned a's value and a is assigned b's original value. The solution will require the use of a third variable as a holder.