Title: Computer programming Content: Computer programming is the process of telling a computer to do certain things by giving it instructions. These instructions are called programs. A person who writes instructions is a computer programmer. The instructions come in different languages; they are called programming languages. There are many programming languages. Sometimes, programmers use special software, such as integrated development environments (IDEs), which have many special parts, including a text editor, to help them to type and edit programs. Computers understand instructions directly if those instructions are written in machine code, special characters that can be processed by the computer but are difficult for humans to read. Writing these instructions directly in machine code takes a long time and is difficult, so instructions are written in a language easier for people to use, which the computer converts into "computer form" instructions (in other words, machine code) so the computer can follow them. The simplest of these is assembly language. Programs written in a language more like English are converted by a compiler. Some languages, called interpreted languages, use interpreters instead of assemblers or compilers. Once a program has been compiled the instructions in it are written into a file that contains a series of numbers that the computer can understand. These machine-instructions will be loaded into the memory computer's so that the can run them when the executable is opened. In the event that data is not transferred correctly, it can result in == Variables == A variable is a data piece in the program that can be changed. Variables can include information added by the user, or answers that are found as a result of a calculation. == Conditionals == Conditionals are parts of the program that work if something the program can check to see whether it is true. If that part is not true, then the program won't make it happen. A conditional is often done with an "If Statement". Here is an example of an if statement in the Perl programming language. What it does is it checks to see if the name variable is Bill. If the name variable is Bill, then it will print out the words "Hi Bill!". #!/usr/local/bin/perl $name = "Bill"; if ($name eq "Bill")  Sometimes, a programmer may need to remove something from the code, but for many different reasons, they may not want to just simply delete it. An easy solution is to use the comment symbol. The computer will think that the code is just comments, rather than actual code, but the programmer will still be able to see it and read it. Here is an example of that in the Perl programming language. In Perl, the "#" symbol is used for comments, instead of forward slashes "//" like in the C (programming language). $name = "Sam"; #we set the name variable to be Sam $age = 14; #We set the age to be 14 # $country = "France"; because of the special comment symbol at the beginning of the line, this line is now a comment. == Debugging == Computer programmers make mistakes when writing codes. The mistakes are called bugs and cause the program to follow the wrong instructions. Debugging is the process of finding and fixing the mistakes. To debug code is to find such mistakes. There are many debugging methods. Software such as text editors and IDEs have tools that can detect specific mistakes in the codes before the program is executed. Programmers can also use programs called debuggers. A debugger can run a program step by step and track how values of specific variables change when the program is running. Programmers can use a debugger to find where the mistake happened in the code.