Computer Languages can be broken down in 2 categories, for simplicity sake. Scripting Languages and Coding Languages. (This statement will probably get me in trouble with “geeks” and programmers but for us this will work)
Java Script ~ is a computer language used mostly by web page designers, it allows interactive features to be added to web pages. It is important to people who surf and use the INTERNET. You will hardly ever come to any modern web page today that does not use some JavaScript in it. So yes you need to down load JAVA and install it and allow scripts to operate on your browser
Here is the next trick question, how much do you really want to know? How confused do you really want to be?
OK that's 2 trick questions. I am going to say the answer to 1 is as little as possible, and the answer to 2 is you would like no confusion whatsoever.
In the world of computers everything you see or read, every game you play, every web page you view, even the very operations your computer takes to turn on and off are all some form of computer coding or languages. The real nice thing about computer languages where you are concerned is they come with there own translators.
Not everyone can speak every known language on the planet, and the same holds true with computers. There are probably as many computer languages as there are languages on this planet.
They all start with one language and its not really a language, or a code, but a form of math, and we have talked about that before, binary math, which is simple and very complicated at the same time, your basic binary math functions are:
0 + 0 = 0
0 + 1 = 1
1 + 0 = 1
1 + 1 = 10
The numbers 0 and 1 represent switches and 0 = Off and 1 = On. (that's another sentence that will get me in trouble with “geeks”)
The complications that you see and don't see, and the complications I am talking about are very difficult to explain.
I know people who can read and write HTML (Hyper Text Markup Language) in their sleep but have no idea how it turns into pretty pictures on you computer screen.
Your browser, is a translator and that makes your browser selection so important. Somebody in another computer language wrote a program that translates html into something you can see and understand. In the early days of computers all entries were made in text and most web pages were in text only as well.
One interesting question that came up today while talking about today's class, was how did we get from text entries to cute little pictures, which as you learned last week are called GUI's (graphic user interface). Well in the beginning there was a computer user who was handicapped, and one of the main uses for early computers was the health industry and helping blind, deaf, and other handicapped individuals, and text entry was not really possible for them, so in came GUI's, as other people got to teaching computers they liked the GUI's and bought those for themselves, then showed there friends and here we go the birth of GUI's by popular demand.
So think of the programs you use on your computer as a translator, take the game minefield for example, if you like to play that game, you tell your computer to open it, in English, the computer translates that to computer language, opens it in English for you and you begin to play, as you play another language translates your moves, and makes those moves in computer language for you then translates that all back in English for you and then you get to repeat the process all over again, for each and every move you make. And this is why your hardware selection, such your CPU (Core Processing Unit), your RAM (Random Access Memory) and your FSB (Front Side Bus) so important, much more important than how big your hard drive is.
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