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Concept
Computer program
Summary
A computer program is a sequence or set of instructions in a programming language for a computer to execute. Computer programs are one component of software, which also includes documentation and other intangible components.
A computer program in its human-readable form is called source code. Source code needs another computer program to execute because computers can only execute their native machine instructions. Therefore, source code may be translated to machine instructions using the language's compiler. (Assembly language programs are translated using an assembler.) The resulting file is called an executable. Alternatively, source code may execute within the language's interpreter.
If the executable is requested for execution, then the operating system loads it into memory and starts a process. The central processing unit will soon switch to this process so it can fetch, decode, and then execute each machine instruction.
If the source code is requested for execution, then the operating system loads the corresponding interpreter into memory and starts a process. The interpreter then loads the source code into memory to translate and execute each statement. Running the source code is slower than running an executable. Moreover, the interpreter must be installed on the computer.
The "Hello, World!" program is used to illustrate a language's basic syntax. The syntax of the language BASIC (1964) was intentionally limited to make the language easy to learn. For example, variables are not declared before being used. Also, variables are automatically initialized to zero. Here is an example computer program, in Basic, to average a list of numbers:
10 INPUT "How many numbers to average?", A
20 FOR I = 1 TO A
30 INPUT "Enter number:", B
40 LET C = C + B
50 NEXT I
60 LET D = C/A
70 PRINT "The average is", D
80 END
Once the mechanics of basic computer programming are learned, more sophisticated and powerful languages are available to build large computer systems.
Official source
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