In this chapter, we will explain the following: • How a computer solves a problem • The various stages in

the development of a computer program: from problem definition to finished program • How a
computer executes a program • What is a “data type” and its fundamental role in writing a program •
The role of characters—the basic building blocks of all programs • The concepts of constants and
variables • The distinction between syntax and logic errors • How to produce basic output in C using the
printf statement • What is an escape sequence • How descriptive or explanatory comments can be
included in your program • What is an assignment statement and how to write one in C 1.1 Programs,
Languages, and Compilers We are all familiar with the computer’s ability to perform a wide variety of
tasks. For instance, we can use it to play games, write a letter or a book, perform accounting functions
for a company, learn a foreign language, listen to music on a CD, send a fax, or search for information on
the Internet. How is this possible, all on the same machine? The answer lies with programming— the
creation of a sequence of instructions that the computer can perform (we say “execute”) to accomplish
each task. This sequence of instructions is called a program. Each task requires a different program: • To
play a game, we need a game-playing program. • To write a letter or a book, we need a word processing
program. www.it-ebooks.info Chapter 1 ■ Elementary Programming Concepts 2 • To do accounts, we
need an accounting program. • To learn Spanish, we need a program that teaches Spanish. • To listen to
a CD, we need a music-playing program. • To send a fax, we need a fax-sending program. • To use the
Internet, we need a program called a “Web browser.” For every task we want to perform, we need an
appropriate program. And in order for the computer to run a program, the program must be stored (we
sometimes say loaded) in the computer’s memory. But what is the nature of a program? First, we need
to know that computers are built to execute instructions written in what is called machine language. In
machine language, everything is expressed in terms of the binary number system—1s and 0s. Each
computer has its own machine language and the computer can execute instructions written in that
language only. The instructions themselves are very simple: for example, add or subtract two numbers,
compare one number with another, or copy a number from one place to another. How, then, can the
computer perform such a wide variety of tasks, solving such a wide variety of problems, with such
simple instructions? The answer is that no matter how complex an activity may seem, it can usually be
broken down into a series of simple steps. It is the ability to analyze a complex problem and express its
solution in terms of simple computer instructions that is one of the hallmarks of a good programmer.
Machine language is considered a low-level programming language. In the early days of computing
(1940s and ‘50s) programmers had to write programs in machine language, that is, express all their
instructions using 1s and 0s. To make life a little easier for them, assembly language was developed. This
was closely related to machine language but it allowed the programmer to use mnemonic instruction
codes (such as ADD and names for storage locations (such as sum) rather than strings of binary digits
(bits). For instance, a programmer could refer to a number by sum rather than have to remember that
the number was stored in memory location 1000011101101011. A program called an assembler is used
to convert an assembly language program into machine language. Still, programming this way had
several drawbacks: • It was very tedious and error prone. • It forced the programmer to think in terms
of the machine rather than in terms of his problem. • A program written in the machine language of one
computer could not be run on a computer with a different machine language. Changing your computer
could mean having to rewrite all your programs. To overcome these problems, high-level or problem-
oriented languages were developed in the late 1950s and ‘60s. The most popular of these were
FORTRAN (FORmula TRANslation) and COBOL (COmmon Business-Oriented Language). FORTRAN was
designed for solving scientific and engineering problems that involved a great deal of numerical
computation. COBOL was designed to solve the data-processing problems of the business community