What is programming?

Programming. Coding. Developing.

Most of the time, it doesn't matter what you call it. These words are often used interchangeably. I do like using programming more of the three as I think it captures the essence of it best.

So what is it?

Simply put, programming is instructing a computer to do a task.

You may rephrase this to "telling a computer what to do", or "telling a computer how to do something". Both are valid paradigms of programming.

Have you ever used a cookbook? A recipe lists the ingredients we need, and also lists the steps we need to do. Followed diligently, we will be able to transform the ingredients into the dish that the recipe is for.

Programming is much like writing a recipe that the computer understands, with the dish being the outcome that we want. Only, in programming, the computer is very diligent in following instructions. Maybe even too diligent.

That may sound simple, but the fact that the computer will always do what you tell it to do means that if it's not doing what we want it to do, then the fault is likely our own. This is the cause of a lot of headaches in programming.